A pirated, high-quality version of Christopher Nolan’s film, *The Odyssey*, was viewed millions of times on X before the platform took it down. This incident highlights the intense eagerness among fans to catch the blockbuster.
According to reports, this bootleg version achieved over 2.1 million views in just two and a half hours on a Saturday, only to be replaced with a takedown notice and account suspension shortly after.
“Can you believe someone uploaded *The Odyssey* on X?” one user exclaimed in a different post that garnered about 3 million views, which certainly fueled illicit sharing among users.
By the following Sunday, a lower-quality copy of the film was also removed after it had accumulated nearly 50,000 views in a couple of hours, as stated by industry sources.
As of Monday, another video claiming to be an illegal copy of *The Odyssey* circulated but turned out to be a classic Internet prank known as “rickrolling,” where users are tricked into watching Rick Astley’s 1987 hit, *Never Gonna Give You Up*, on repeat for hours.
A spokesperson for Universal Pictures shared that they swiftly initiated actions to remove the pirated content once they became aware of it. “We take copyright infringement seriously and will pursue all necessary measures to safeguard our content and intellectual property rights,” the spokesperson added.
It seems unlikely that the film production giant is overly worried about piracy, especially since *The Odyssey* continues to perform remarkably well at the box office, earning around $87 million in its second week, largely driven by demand for IMAX 70mm tickets.
The film made a staggering $124.5 million during its initial week, marking the third-best debut of the year, which is quite impressive given its R rating and the restricted audience size.
Nolan’s *The Odyssey* is notable as the first feature film entirely filmed with heavy IMAX cameras, a fact that movie lovers are eager to experience on a true IMAX 70mm screen, of which only 40 exist globally.
The soaring demand for these higher-priced IMAX tickets has led to quite the box office surge, with some die-hard fans reportedly paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to scalpers on sites like eBay.
One user even joked beneath the now-deleted pirated post, saying, “The whole *Odyssey* movie is in a tweet, just like Nolan intended.”
The excitement around IMAX screenings seems to be particularly pronounced in New York City. There’s only one theater with a 70mm screen, the AMC Lincoln Square 13, and tickets there are sold out through August.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who owns the platform, has also been vocal about his opinions on the film. He retweeted criticisms regarding Nolan’s casting choices of black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and transgender actor Elliot Page as a Greek warrior.
Interestingly, Nolan’s previous film, *Oppenheimer*, featured a primarily white cast and went on to win the Best Picture Oscar at the 2024 ceremony.
Musk has announced plans to release a “historically accurate” version of *The Odyssey* using an AI tool called Grok Imagine later this year.
