The holdover weekend delivered the loudest number of Christopher Nolan’s career and one of the best second-weekend holds for a $100M+ opener in history, right there in the same top tier as Top Gun: Maverick.
The Odyssey
Let’s start with the number that just landed. $21.4M on Tuesday is a genuinely absurd figure for a fifth day of release, and the way to see it is to line those first weekdays up against the Nolan films The Odyssey is chasing. It did $18.7M on Monday and $21.4M on Tuesday; The Dark Knight, off a bigger opening, did $24.5M and $20.9M; The Dark Knight Rises did $19.4M and $17.8M; Oppenheimer did $12.7M and $12.1M. The Odyssey’s Tuesday out-grossed the first Tuesday of all three, and it is the only one of the four whose Tuesday rose rather than fell — up 14% on the Discount Tuesday bump, where The Dark Knight slid 15% into its own first Tuesday, The Dark Knight Rises 8%, and Oppenheimer 5%. A film gaining ground on its fifth day rather than bleeding a front-loaded core is the profile of a film that holds in the low-40s next weekend rather than the high-40s, which firms up the call below toward the top of our range.
Back to last weekend's number: The Odyssey opened to $123.5M, and now comes the number that actually decides its summer: the second-weekend hold — and here Nolan’s own filmography splits cleanly in two. His Batman tentpoles opened enormous, and then The Dark Knight dropped 53% in its second weekend off that $158.4M debut, and The Dark Knight Rises 61% off $160.9M. His adult-driven originals dropped smaller off a lower opening: Oppenheimer opened to $82.4M on this same late-July frame in 2023 and dropped 43.4% in weekend two to $46.7M on its way to $329.9M domestic; Dunkirk fell 47.3% and Interstellar 40.4%. The Odyssey opened over 40% higher than Oppenheimer, it carries strong audience and critic scores (A CinemaScore, a 4.4 on Letterboxd, 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, 95% with critics), and its Monday and Tuesday held better than any of them held theirs. Put that profile on a roughly 40% second-weekend drop and you land in the mid-$70s, which would set it up for a 10-day domestic cume of around $270M.
The premium-format demand is helping with the drop here: IMAX and PLF screens have been sold out for a week and a half, prime-time seats across LA and New York are still gone on weeknights, and Nolan owns every large-format screen in the country until Spider-Man takes them on July 31. That is exactly the wall of pent-up demand that produces a soft second-weekend drop, because everyone who couldn’t get the seat they wanted in week one is still trying to get it now. It also quietly settles the argument that trails every adult-skewing original around, the one that says audiences won’t turn out for a hard-R original with no franchise behind it. In this case, Nolan is the franchise.
Our model has The Odyssey finishing between $423M and $453M domestic on 3.5x legs, and a second weekend in the mid-$70s keeps it in the upper half of that band. That runs it clear past Oppenheimer’s $330M to become the biggest of Nolan’s films outside the Batman trilogy, and at the top of that band it would climb into the trilogy’s territory too, edging past The Dark Knight Rises’ $448M and leaving only The Dark Knight’s $533M ahead of it in his entire catalogue. If it did happen to leg as well as Oppenheimer (4x opening), that would get it to $500M. Either way, $400M looks close to locked, and this will end up as one of the biggest R-rated grossers ever.
The overseas number is where this gets genuinely big. The Odyssey has $140.3M of its $263.8M worldwide from international already, with several major markets still to open, and Oppenheimer rode this same profile all the way to $975.8M worldwide. Match that pace and The Odyssey is a $1B-class release on a mythology that travels better than a period drama about physics ever did. We can’t say that $1B is locked just yet, but we may be able to after this weekend.
Moana
Moana leads a genuine three-way scrum for second, and it earned pole position the hard way, out-grossing both Toy Story 5 and Minions & Monsters on Monday. It needed to. The live-action remake opened to just $43.1M, the second-worst debut of any Disney live-action redo, then fell 58% in its second weekend, and its one real asset now is that The Odyssey pulls the adults and leaves it the default family pick of late July. The A- CinemaScore and 90% audience score against a brutal 34% from critics are what keep the weekday floor from caving, and a hold near 32% gets it to about $12M and a cume around $100M by Sunday night.
None of that changes the ending. On a $250M budget, a $125–133M domestic run is a write-off, and $177.3M worldwide through 11 days will not rescue it either. But there is a real difference between a film that stabilizes into the summer’s default kids option and one that simply collapses, and a steady third weekend keeps Moana on the right side of that line, out of the Supergirl tier of 2026 wreckage even if it never gets anywhere near its budget.
The calendar helps more than the reviews do. No new kids title opens until PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie on August 14, so for three weeks Moana splits the entire family audience with only Toy Story 5 and Minions, which is deep enough into its run that the matinee crowd is looking for something newer. That is the one structural advantage a soft opener can actually bank on, and it is the whole case for Moana holding steadier from here than its 58% second weekend implied. If it is going to leg toward anything respectable, this quiet stretch is where it happens.
Toy Story 5
Toy Story 5 already collected the headline it wanted this week. Sometime Monday it ticked past $431.6M and slipped by The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s $429.8M to become the highest-grossing film of 2026 domestically. This is a sixth weekend now, so the race is with the calendar rather than the chart, and its steadiest weekly hold of the run, down 31% on Monday, points to a soft weekend drop near 30%, another $9.5M or so and a cume near $445M. It will clear Toy Story 4’s $434M franchise record on Friday.
The bigger prize is the year-end crown, and it is suddenly a three-way race. At $957.5M worldwide, Toy Story 5 clears $1B in the next two weeks to become 2026’s third billion-dollar movie (Mario and Michael being the other two), and it will hold the top spot for exactly as long as it takes The Odyssey to climb past it from below and Spider-Man to lap them both from above, probably inside that film’s first ten days. A Pixar sequel spending a few weeks as the biggest movie of the year is a run the studio will be very happy with. This is an increase from 4 and the top performance for the franchise, one that is proving remarkably consistent with 3, 4 and now 5 all topping $1B worldwide.
Minions & Monsters
Minions & Monsters keeps sliding toward a franchise low that looked impossible when this series was minting $360M-plus grossers. It sits at $138.2M after four weeks off a $37M debut, running roughly 47% behind Despicable Me 4 at the same stage, and Despicable Me 4 was already considered a step down. A fourth-weekend hold around 30% puts this near $10M and $150M+ domestic, comfortably the lowest total the franchise has ever posted. What keeps it out of bomb territory is the math underneath the disappointment: an $85M budget and $358.4M already banked worldwide mean this turns a profit no matter how the domestic run ends.
The scale of the drop-off is the real story. Minions: The Rise of Gru opened to $107M and legged to $370.5M domestic and $937.7M worldwide just four years ago; this one opened at a third of that and will finish at roughly 40% of its domestic total. Illumination is still going to clear $450M worldwide and bank a profit, so call it a letdown, not a disaster, but the brand clearly needs a rethink about what a Minions movie is worth without an event behind it. It is nowhere close to dead, it is just no longer automatic.
Evil Dead Burn
Evil Dead Burn is doing what horror does in July, which is vanish fast. It fell 65% in its second weekend the moment The Odyssey showed up, and week three is rarely kinder to a genre that front-loads its whole audience into opening night, so expect roughly a 50% slide to about $2.4M and a cume near $28M. That points to a final around $30M against a $20M budget, and with $50.7M already worldwide it is profitable on paper, but it is a clear miss next to Evil Dead Rise’s $67M domestic in 2023 and never found the second gear that a better-reviewed horror entry might have. Warner Bros. wanted this to hold the horror slot deep into August. Instead it will be an afterthought by the time a new Insidious tries the same trick on August 21.
Down the chart: The Invite keeps quietly outperforming, the rare A24 title still adding theaters. It platformed to a $28,597 per-screen average on 28 screens, exploded 712% when it went wide to 1,610, grew again to 2,110 last weekend, and should hold to around $2.5M this frame for a cume past $17M. Young Washington ($41.4M) fades toward its $45M finish, and Obsession, the year’s most improbable legger, hits streaming this week and winds down a run that should end around $260M+ off a $17M opening weekend, one of the great multipliers of the decade. The only new entry of any kind is a re-release: Sony puts The Fifth Element back in theaters on July 26 for a one-weekend anniversary run that plays the repertory lanes without troubling the top ten.
Looking ahead: this is the last calm weekend of the summer, and everyone in the industry knows it. Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens July 31, and our tracking has it in the $280–310M range, which would be the biggest opening of 2026 by more than $120M over Toy Story 5’s $160M and the biggest Spider-Man launch ever, clearing Spider-Man: No Way Home’s $260M from 2021. That is the range where a single film reorders the whole year: No Way Home turned its $260M start into $804.8M domestic and $1.92B worldwide, and even the low end of this tracking sets up the biggest domestic run of 2026 (so far…) with room to spare.
Bottom line: before the spider lands, July gets to enjoy the one thing it spent the first half of the season desperate for, a genuine adult-driven hit holding like the classics do. Anything over $65M for The Odyssey this weekend locks a $430M-plus domestic run; anything over $70M and the only question left is how far past Oppenheimer it can climb.
The holdover weekend that was supposed to be quiet delivered the loudest number of Christopher Nolan’s career instead. The Odyssey fell just 27% in its second weekend to $90.0M, a hold no Nolan film has ever posted, and pushed its ten-day total to $289.4M. Everything beneath it fought for the family lane, one genuine new opener broke through in limited release, and the race for the 2026 domestic crown suddenly has a new favorite.
The Odyssey
We called $71–78M and a roughly 40% hold in Wednesday’s preview; The Odyssey didn’t just beat it, it destroyed it — $90.0M on a 27.1% drop. Set that against Nolan’s own filmography and it’s the biggest second weekend of Christopher Nolan’s career, full stop. That’s even more impressive considering it opened more than $35M lower than The Dark Knight, which was Nolan’s previous best second weekend at $75.2M. The Dark Knight Rises did $62.1M; Oppenheimer did $46.7M. The Odyssey cleared The Dark Knight’s mark by nearly $15M — and it did it off a much smaller opening. To put things in perspective, The Odyssey’s second weekend is bigger than Oppenheimer’s first weekend, which itself broke out during the Barbenheimer craze. Opening smaller and legging harder is the exact profile that produces enormous final numbers.
In drop percentages, it’s also by a wide margin the best second-weekend hold Nolan has ever posted. Oppenheimer’s -43% was his previous gold standard for legs; The Dark Knight fell -53% and The Dark Knight Rises -61%, while Inception was the previous best at -32% off a much smaller $63M opening weekend. The Odyssey’s -27% is incredibly impressive and one of the best holds ever for a movie opening above $100M. It basically held just as well as Top Gun: Maverick, which was a phenomenon that legged out 5.7x its opening weekend to an over-$700M domestic total. A drop that shallow on a nine-figure opening is not a Nolan number at all; it’s the very top tier of blockbuster legginess.
Through ten days the cume is $289.4M. That trails only The Dark Knight’s $313.8M among all Nolan films at the same point and has already edged past The Dark Knight Rises’ $287.1M — again, despite opening $35M lighter than either — while lapping Oppenheimer’s $174.6M by more than $114M. Breaking down the weekend, The Odyssey did $25.7M Friday and then rose 35% to $34.6M Saturday, one of the biggest matinee bumps in the top ten. The Saturday and Sunday week-on-week declines were an amazing -17% and -3%. Again, this almost never happens.
Our model moved with it: after opening weekend we were seeing a $425–450M domestic final, but after this weekend’s hold the model updated to an enormous $550M on 4.5x legs — which would make The Odyssey the leggiest wide release of Nolan’s career, ahead of Oppenheimer’s 4.0x, and the biggest ever, ahead of The Dark Knight’s $533M final. Wherever it lands, at this point $500M feels locked and $600M is even possible. Worldwide the film is at $652.0M and climbing, with $1B a certainty; it may even coast past Deadpool & Wolverine’s $1.3B to become the biggest R-rated film of all time. Hard to overstate this hold — this run is one for the record books.
Moana
Moana won the three-way family scrum for second and crossed $100M. That’s the good news; the bad news is the drop was still not where we wanted it, ending at -41%, steeper than hoped and worse than the other two family movies. It may start to fall behind Toy Story 5 and Minions & Monsters as soon as next weekend, since those two are holding better, have better word of mouth, and are both performing much stronger. Worldwide is $229.5M and it will probably end its run below $300M — not Supergirl-level bad, but not enough to break even on its $250M budget.
Hadestown: The Musical
The weekend’s one real breakthrough. Opened to $10.24M on just 1,949 screens for a $5,256 per-theater average, far and away the best in the top ten and the biggest opening Bleecker Street has ever posted — the best live-capture debut since Hamilton. Against a $5M budget it doubled its cost in three days. While it’ll be very front-loaded, anything beyond this is just gravy.
Toy Story 5
Toy Story 5 dropped just 26%, beat our 30%-hold call, and pushed to $448.7M — extending its 2026 crown past The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s $429.8M by roughly $19M, and already past Toy Story 4’s $434.0M final. The +36% Saturday jump was the biggest among family holdovers. It also coasted past $1B worldwide this weekend and will wear the worldwide crown alongside the domestic crown for 2026 — but only for a couple of weeks, with both The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day about to soar past it on both counts. Still, this is a very strong performance and the biggest yet in the franchise, and these strong holds are promising for a continued run as the default word-of-mouth family crowd-pleaser into August.
Minions & Monsters
A strong hold as Minions & Monsters crosses $150M domestic, right where we called it before the weekend, but the film is still tracking toward the franchise’s lowest domestic total ever. The legs (4.2x) are healthy, and it should end up close to $200M domestic and $460M worldwide, comfortably profitable off the $85M budget and a strong performance — if you forget that it’s down 40–50% from the franchise average.
The Invite
The quiet standout. The Invite fell just 25%, the best hold of any wide holdover, with a +39% Saturday jump, biggest in the mid-chart. A24 should collect about $25M when all is said and done, very solid against the roughly $12M budget here.
Down the chart, the other two openers played small. Motor City bowed to $1.7M for IFC on 1,600 screens, a modest start for the action title, while Her Private Hell managed $539K in a 675-theater Neon release. Among the holdovers, Young Washington added $1.9M to reach $44.9M, and Obsession kept grinding, its $1.5M eleventh-weekend haul pushing an extraordinary platform run to $261.4M. Two micro-releases made noise on percentage — Reading Lolita in Tehran surged 795% on a wider break and The Hole jumped 258% — the kind of expansions that mean everything to their distributors and nothing to the top line.
Looking ahead, the quiet is about to end. Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens next weekend tracking in the $280–310M range, a number that would reset the entire chart and, for one weekend at least, finally pull the adult and four-quadrant crowds away from The Odyssey. This holdover lull was the calm before Sony’s biggest swing of the summer.