Two million people reportedly watched a leaked copy of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey on X this weekend — but by the time the account was suspended, the post flagging it had been viewed more than 3m times.
A high-quality pirated version of the film went viral on Saturday after an account linked to it posted: “Someone uploaded ‘The Odyssey’ full movie on X. Can you believe it?” The embedded video gathered 2.1m views in two and a half hours before X suspended the account, according to Variety. A lower-quality version appeared on Sunday and was removed two hours later after amassing almost 50,000 views, The Hollywood Reporter said.
“Leaked Odyssey bootleg on X viewed 3m+ times; Universal takes it down; film's box office still strong at $640m.”
“The full odyssey movie in a tweet, as nolan intended,” one user joked. “The whole Odyssey film in an embedded video on Twitter. Crazy,” wrote another. Nolan shot the entire three-hour film on 70mm Imax film, a format designed for giant screens.
Universal Pictures said in a statement: “We became aware of the unauthorized posting of the film and immediately initiated takedown protocols. We take copyright infringement seriously and will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights.”
The leak is unlikely to dent the film's box office run. The Odyssey earned $215m (£160m) worldwide in its second weekend, taking its total to $640m (£480m). In the US, it took $87m, a 30% drop from its opening weekend but still a sign of strong holding power.
Elon Musk, owner of X, has been a vocal critic of the film, using its casting choices — such as Black actor Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy — to argue about DEI culture. Last week he said he would use his AI platform Grok to make a “historically accurate” adaptation of Homer's epic. Nolan has dismissed such criticism, saying: “These conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”