Special holiday-season re-release positions The Odyssey for a three-front win
As The Odyssey readies a holiday return to theaters, it’s chasing three big targets that could make or break the re-release.
Starting December 11, 2026 , Universal is putting The Odyssey back on roughly 1,000 theaters across the U.S. and Canada for a limited run, including premium shows in IMAX and select IMAX 70mm auditoriums. It ’s a holiday-season return built around the exact way Christopher Nolan wants you to see it: on the biggest possible screen, on film where available.
Why the return
Nolan’s epic was already one of the year’s juggernauts, with $1.8 billion worldwide and a 94% Rotten Tomatoes score. A winter re-release gives it one more lap while Academy voters are filling out ballots — and could nudge it into the record books.
- Awards heat: Timed to keep the movie front-of-mind as a Best Picture and Best Director contender, with craft categories in play.
- Box office milestone: Another wave of ticket sales could push the global haul closer to the $2 billion mark and help Universal notch a new studio record.
- IMAX dominance: The film has reportedly earned a record $550 million through IMAX alone; bringing back IMAX and IMAX 70mm screenings gives it a shot to extend that lead.
For fans who missed the 70mm runs the first time — or just want another go at that wall-of-sound sea battle and cavernous island vistas — the format is the event. Universal’s booking includes traditional IMAX and the large-format 70mm film prints at the handful of theaters that can run them.
Not without debate
Even with its blockbuster status, the adaptation has drawn pushback from one of the most prominent voices on Homer. Emily Wilson, a classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania and translator of the 2017 English edition of The Odyssey, criticized the movie’s emotional center in an op-ed for The Atlantic and a review for the London Review of Books.
“These lessons are legible in Homer and Virgil, but are elided by Nolan’s visually stunning, emotionally empty film.”
Wilson argues the film leans into battles over compassion and hospitality, and says it lacks the emotional and ethical depth she finds in the poem. Nolan’s take does shift the emphasis — foregrounding Odysseus ’ guilt, pain, loss, and trauma and introducing new characters — choices that stirred plenty of discussion on release and will likely resurface as audiences revisit it in theaters.
The Odyssey returns to theaters December 11, 2026 for a limited engagement across the U.S. and Canada, with IMAX and IMAX 70mm shows included where available.