On today’s episode, in our Box Office segment, Variety’s Rebecca Rubin reports that the good news keeps on coming for the movie biz as “Spider Man: Brand New Day” soars in weekend two and “The Odyssey” becomes Christopher Nolan’s highest-grossing film. Most important, the summer tally to date has already hit the $4 billion benchmark that was the norm pre-COVID.

Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” packed ’em in for a second weekend. But it’s Universal Pictures’ “The Odyssey” that is defying gravity as an R-rated adult historical drama. The movie has legs that won’t quit, says Rubin, Variety‘s senior film reporter.

” ‘The Odyssey’ now has made one point one billion dollars and it is officially Christopher Nolan’s highest-grossing movie of all time, and it’s also the highest-grossing Imax release ever. It has made $289 million just in Imax, and that’s above the company’s prior record holder, which was [2009’s] ‘Avatar.’ And that movie made around $270 million in Imax,” Rubin says. “And what’s significant about both of these milestones, both being Christopher Nolan’s biggest movie and Imax’s biggest movie, is this film has only been out for four weeks and it does not appear close to be slowing down. And so those numbers are just going to keep rising and keep rising.”

Another accelerant is coming as “Odyssey” opens in China this week.

“China is a very big moviegoing market, and a lot of those Imax screens are sold out through September,” Rubin notes. “Christopher Nolan is a popular director there. And so just knowing the amount of hype that this film has already, the fact that it has already crossed the billion-dollar mark is going to generate a lot of excitement in China for this movie.”

The heat from July’s two big releases, plus “Obsession” and “Backrooms” and other buzzy hits so far this summer is propelling the overall summer haul past $4 billion.

“It’ll be the second time since the pandemic that summer revenues have hit that milestone. It used to regularly eclipse $4 billion pre-COVID,” Rubin says. “The only other time that Hollywood has earned $4 billion [in the summer] since the pandemic was in 2023, when Barbenheimer was all the rage. And here is we are only at August 10. And so this will firmly be the biggest summer since the pandemic.”

(Pictured: “The Odyssey” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”)

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