Every Christopher Nolan Film Ranked by Box Office — With The Odyssey Now at the Top

The one that finally beat Batman. Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Robert Pattinson in support, and a $263.8 million global opening that was the biggest of Nolan's career by a wide margin. It is his first billion-dollar film without a superhero in it, the highest-grossing R-rated release of 2026, and the first feature in history shot entirely with IMAX 70mm film cameras — a format only about 26 American cinemas can actually project. Still in theatrical release.

The record-holder from 2012 to 2026, and the least-loved of the three Batman films — which is precisely why its fourteen-year reign at the top of Nolan's chart was such an odd fact. It is the highest-grossing film of the trilogy and the one nobody names when asked about the trilogy.

The film that changed what a comic-book adaptation was allowed to be, and the only entry in this top three that made more domestically than internationally — $535 million of its billion came from North America, a split that no modern blockbuster achieves any more. Heath Ledger's posthumous Oscar is the part everyone remembers; the $185 million budget against a billion-dollar return is the part the industry remembers.

Three hours of men in rooms discussing physics and security clearances, $975.8 million, seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Until Michael crossed $1 billion in 2026 it was the highest-grossing biopic ever made. Two-thirds of its money came from outside North America, which is the number that made every studio reconsider what an adult drama could do internationally.

The proof of concept for everything that followed: an original science-fiction film with no source material, a structure most of the audience could not fully explain afterwards, and $839.8 million. Warner Bros. green-lit it on the strength of The Dark Knight, which is the clearest illustration available of how Nolan converted franchise capital into freedom.

$764 million lifetime, and the only film on this list whose total has kept moving materially through re-releases — repeated IMAX runs, including one in 2025, have added tens of millions since its original 2014 close. Its reputation has followed the same curve: reviewed as a flawed swing, now routinely named as the favourite.

A 106-minute war film with almost no dialogue, no stars in the conventional sense, and a PG-13 rating, at $550 million. It won three Academy Awards and is the film that most directly anticipates The Odyssey: an audience turning out in large numbers for something formally difficult because the format made it an event.

The asterisk in the filmography. Released in August 2020 into cinemas that were shut across most of the world, it took $376.6 million — of which only $58.5 million was domestic, the lowest domestic share of any Nolan film by an enormous margin. Whatever you think of the film, its box office measures a pandemic rather than an audience.

$375.6 million, which in 2005 was considered a solid rather than spectacular result — and which is why nobody at Warner Bros. was expecting what happened three years later. It is the lowest-grossing Batman film of the trilogy by $630 million.

The remake of a Norwegian thriller that Nolan made as his studio calling card, with Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank — $113.8 million and the only film on this list he did not write or co-write. It is also, in retrospect, the last time he made something small.

$109.7 million in 2006, made between the first two Batman films on a $40 million budget, and now probably the most-recommended film in his catalogue by people who dislike the blockbusters. Two magicians, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, destroying each other over a trick — the purest statement of the obsession theme that runs through everything above it on this list.

$43.3 million lifetime, including re-releases in 2020 and 2025 — a number that would be a catastrophe for anything above it and was a triumph for a film that struggled to find a distributor at all. It is the film that made the career, and the reverse-chronology structure is still the most-imitated formal device of the last twenty-five years.

Shot on weekends over the course of a year in London, in black and white, on 16mm, with a cast of friends and a reported budget of $6,000. Its worldwide gross is too small to be reliably tracked. The distance between this and a $1.12 billion IMAX Homer adaptation is the widest career arc in modern film, and both films are 70 and 210 minutes of a man doing the same thing: following someone who will not explain himself.