saidi’s take – 7/27/2026

Hello everyone,

BOX OFFICE: As expected, without any major competition opening this weekend “The Odyssey” continued to dominate sinking only 27% for its second weekend to make $90 million.  That makes its domestic total almost $290 million.  Meanwhile, “Toy Story 5” zoomed to the top of the box office list.  It is currently the #1 movie at the domestic box office for 2026 with almost $450 million.

Total domestic weekend dropped about 22% to $146.4 million.

The big test for “The Odyssey” will be this coming weekend when it goes up against “Spider-Man Brand New Day” which is expected to have the biggest opening weekend of 2026 (estimated to be $180-$190 million).  That movie will probably take all the big screens in the country except for the IMAX screens (which is committed to play “The Odyssey” for at least 6 weeks).  Since IMAX only accounted for about 27% of “The Odyssey” box office, the movie could take a steep drop next weekend.

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: “The Odyssey” also did very well internationally making a worldwide total of $652 million in two weeks – without opening in China yet (although China has never had a huge box office for Christopher Nolan movies other than The Dark Knight movies).  Meanwhile, “Toy Story 5” zoomed past $1 BILLION and zoomed past the other two movies of 2026 that have made more than $1 BILLION at the worldwide box office.  “Toy Story 5” is also now the biggest movie of 2026 at the worldwide box office with $1.023 million.

OTHER NEWS:

• Last week Disney had another round of layoffs which included “approx. 100 people” from Pixar which is just under 10% of its workforce.

• After the judge who paused the Paramount/Warner Bros merger last week extended the pause for a few more weeks, Paramount announced that the merger wouldn’t happen until around this time NEXT YEAR or until all the lawsuits have been resolved.  At the same time, some UK actors including Benedict Cumberbatch, Alan Cumming, and Benedict Wong have co-authored an op-ed telling the UK to block the merger.

• They announced that Sony Pictures and Alamo Drafthouse Theaters will be taking over the long closed Cinerama Dome and the Arclight Hollywood theaters.  After remodeling both (although they can’t do much remodeling to the Cinerama Dome since it’s a historical monument) they will reopen in 2028 and Arclight Hollywood will be renamed “Alamo Drafthouse Hollywood”.

• There are some UNOFFICIAL RUMORS on social media that say the Bruin movie theater in Westwood Village – across the street from the Directors Village Theater (currently showing “The Odyssey” in 70mm and then it will close until the remodeling is done in 2027) – will be reopening sometime later this year.  I call them UNOFFICIAL rumors because no official news websites have mentioned it and every website that I’ve seen (so far) that does mention it doesn’t provide any facts.  They just say, “..independent owners..” will reopen it (no word on who will run it) “..later this year”.  We’ll have to wait and see.

• At Comic Con in San Diego at the Marvel presentation this past weekend they announced that Ryan Gosling will be playing Ghost Rider in an upcoming Marvel movie.

“THE ODYSSEY” NEWS

• I was reading two weeks ago that “The Odyssey” 70mm IMAX will ONLY be showing an extended preview of “Dune 3” before the movie.  Well, that turns out to be wrong at some theaters.  The theater I saw it at projected some trailers with their digital projector before switching to the film projector.

• According to social media posts, there were as many as 4 theaters in the US showing the movie in 70mm IMAX that broke down over the opening weekend of “The Odyssey” but all of them were back up and running quickly. One of them reportedly only cancelled one show.

• I just discovered that “The Odyssey” is ONLY PLAYING IN 5.1 audio (or 6-channel audio for 70mm).  There is no 7.1 surround audio, and the movie is ONE OF THE ONLY MOVIES to play in Dolby Cinema WITHOUT Dolby Atmos audio.  I guess Christopher Nolan cares a lot about the picture but doesn’t care about the sound.

LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR:

This past weekend during Comic Con in San Diego, Johnny Depp appeared in character as Ebenezer Scrooge to promote the movie “Ebenezer” coming out at the end of this year. 

He did some scripted dialogue with other actors and then told some jokes with people dressed up like other characters he played including Willy Wonka, Edward Scissorhands, and Jack Sparrow.  You can go to this link to see videos of some of his conversations.