The Odyssey is a smash hit. Christopher Nolan’s latest big epic brought in over $260 million worldwide over its opening weekend, one of the director’s biggest release hauls ever. It is also the largest opening weekend so far for a live-action movie in 2026. And the film is doing great with critics. The new adaptation is sitting at a 95 on Rotten Tomatoes. Showings are sold out, and with little competition next weekend, The Odyssey is likely to have a massive second weekend at the box office as well.
For normal people, none of this matters. But for conservative commentators, right-wing grifters, and online chuds, Nolan’s Odyssey doing so well, despite them claiming it to be “woke” and filled with “DEI hires,” has sort of broken their brains. Many of them are now latching onto conspiracies to explain the near-unanimous praise, sold-out showings, and big box office numbers.
The ticket sales! The ticket sales are fake!
If you scroll through Twitter, which I don’t recommend anyone actually do, you can quickly find a lot of users who are just unable to comprehend that a famous film director’s latest blockbuster movie with a huge, star-studded cast happens to be succeeding exactly as you would expect it to. Some have latched onto the fact that the movie allegedly cost $800 to $900 million to produce, and so needs to make well over $1.5 billion to break even. Except that’s not true at all.
THE SPIN BEGINS: “‘The Odyssey’ seizes $124M opening in BOX OFFICE TRIUMPH.”
“2026’s biggest live-action debut.”
What they DON’T tell you:
It’s only the THIRD biggest opening of the year, behind “Toy Story 5” and “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.”
TRANSLATION: Not as good as a… pic.twitter.com/jUnL8HG9XU
— Byl Holte (@SirBylHolte) July 20, 2026
The Odyssey’s reported budget, including marketing costs, is around $375 million. Even if Universal is only getting 50 percent of each ticket (which is unlikely for a blockbuster of this scale), that still means it’s nearly halfway to breaking even already, even without counting how much it’s made on ticket sales through the beginning of this week. So despite some weirdos online trying to convince people The Odyssey is a flop, the math just doesn’t add up.
But there’s another conspiracy theory. You see, actually, all those ticket sales are fake! Universal is buying up tickets to fill seats and inflate the box office number. This is a theory that’s been floated around for lots movies that anti-woke grifters have tried to denigrate, despite there being zero actual evidence for it beyond photos claiming to show empty theaters, or the testimonies of people, who are definitely not lying, saying they went to a showing and were all alone.
The obvious question is: Why would Universal do this? And the answer is…well, the culture warrior cosplayers don’t actually have any theory beyond some shadowy network of Hollywood execs and reporters trying to push a woke agenda. It is very silly. Universal is a Hollywood studio filled with greedy people and bean counters. They ain’t buying thousands of seats to lightly inflate a giant number. And theaters are willingly adding more IMAX showings at as late as 3 a.m. to keep up with demand. Theaters would have no reason to do that unless people were actually showing up and buying tickets.
The Odyssey ultimately bombed at the box office making less than 125 million domestic opening day (57th highest) ever. Considering its expense, it’s a failure. This movie will not make money pic.twitter.com/u7pyy4Ulaq
— Bosco (@bosco6000000) July 20, 2026
The numbers!! The numbers are fake!!
Other online losers, likely realizing that there is no way to spin the box office numbers and make The Odyssey look like a flop, have become laser-focused on the idea that Rotten Tomatoes is actually pulling the strings behind the scenes to make The Odyssey look like it’s doing better than it is. Some suggest Universal is paying the site off to do this. They just can’t believe that the movie has a 97 percent verified audience rating on the review aggregator. In fact, according to them, the real audience score is much lower, at around 60 percent. Their evidence? Apparently, some user “hacked” Rotten Tomatoes to show all audience scores, not just verified scores.
For those who have a life, the way the audience score is tallied was changed in 2019 to show data pulled from ticketing app Fandango so that RT could verify that the person sharing their score had actually watched the movie. But people can still upload their scores to the site without verification; these are just not factored in. This has helped cut down on review bombing, but according to some online, it actually means Rotten Tomatoes is hiding the truth!
Big discovery on Rotten Tomatoes for The Odyssey.
The real audience score is sitting at 56%, not the fake 97% they’re showing with their “Verified Audience” bullshit.
A r/KotakuInAction user figured out how to see the actual numbers behind RT’s manipulation.
Exactly what we’ve… pic.twitter.com/UUfunhT4Gu
— Gazz (@Gazz_54) July 20, 2026
Except, this data has never been locked away. You can find it in a few places. And someone has even made a site that tracks both the verified and unverified scores for each movie. It’s not a secret that needs to be hacked in order to be revealed. And regardless, the verified audience score showing only reviews from people who saw the movie (or at least bought a ticket) is a much more relevant and accurate metric.
Ultimately, what is happening here isn’t about movie nerds trying to pinpoint data or figure out box office math.
No, instead what you can see happening on Twitter and other parts of the web is a network of angry people who spent months and months predicting that The Odyssey, with its diverse cast, would flop. They were so sealed into toxic bubbles, surrounded only by likeminded chuds and weirdos, that they started to believe that their timeline represented reality. Surely, if the richest man on Earth is angry about a trans man and black woman being cast in the film, it must mean everyone is equally mad and disappointed, too. Right?
Turns out, that wasn’t the case, and The Odyssey is set to be a massive hit for Nolan and Universal. And honestly, this movie being a big hit shouldn’t be surprising. Nolan has made a massive epic filmed entirely on IMAX starring some of the biggest names in Hollywood and released it during a quiet bit of summer. Betting against that either means you aren’t paying attention or you are so consumed by your beliefs and algo-powered feeds that you have lost hold of what is real. As always, my advice is simple: Log off and chill.
