An illegal, high-quality copy of The Odyssey was leaked online over the weekend, reaching over two million views.
The post from an X account, which has since been suspended, went viral after being re-shared by a separate account. “Someone uploaded The Odyssey full movie on X,” the person wrote. “Can you believe it?”
The message included the entirety of Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, according to Variety. The video amassed 2.1 million views before it was removed and replaced with a takedown notice.
Universal Pictures, the film’s studio, has since vowed to “pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights.”
“We became aware of the unauthorized posting of the film and immediately initiated takedown protocols,” the studio told Variety in a statement. “We take copyright infringement seriously.”
The Independent has contacted Universal Pictures for further comment.
Several other lower-quality bootleg copies have been circulating online, but many have also been taken down in “response to a report by the copyright owner.”
The millions of views of the pirated version certainly have not affected The Odyssey’s enormous box office haul. The acclaimed film, which premiered in theaters July 17, has already earned $639.6 million worldwide. It is projected to cross the $1 billion mark globally, matching his highest-grossing movie, The Dark Knight Rises, which earned $1.085 billion worldwide in 2012.
The Odyssey stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, on his perilous journey home after the decade-long Trojan War. It also features Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, and Tom Holland as Telemachus, Odysseus’s son, alongside Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson and Elliot Page.
It has received rave reviews and is expected to be a major Oscar contender, perhaps earning Nolan his second Best Director and Best Picture awards, following Oppenheimer (2023).
“Christopher Nolan’s massive, fearless adaptation is his best film to date,” The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey proclaimed in a five-star review.
“There are touches of Oppenheimer, Memento and even his Batman movies in this enormous condensing of the British filmmaker’s fixations, brought to life by a cast of seemingly thousands,” Loughrey added, “but it’s the women (among them Anne Hathaway and Samantha Morton) who steal the show.”
Last week, Nolan said it would be at least three years before he made another film as the scale of The Odyssey took a toll on himself and his crew.
“I definitely hit the limits of my own stamina and everybody’s stamina, I think,” he told Today’s Kaylee Hartung. “I mean, it’s The Odyssey, of course it should be difficult. We are not doing the job right making a film of The Odyssey if it doesn’t seem difficult.”
