Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Rated R, Most Expensive R-Rated Film Ever at $250M

UPDATE: Variety has confirmed the “R” rating. They also imply that it might be the most expensive R-rated film ever produced.

EARLIER: With tickets for large-format screens going on sale this morning, Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has now been Rated R by the MPA. The film’s page on the TCL Chinese Theatres website lists the “R” rating, though no explanation is provided for the classification.

That 2-hour and 52-minute runtime is also showing up in a bunch of listings, so we can safely say that this is going to be Nolan’s second-longest film after “Oppenheimer,” which clocked in at exactly 3 hours.

With a $250M budget, “The Odyssey” has thus tied, or maybe even exceeded, “Gladiator II” as the most expensive R-rated movie ever. Puck’s Matt Belloni claims the film actually cost $300M. The only other R-rated movies to come close to this budget are “Deadpool & Wolverine” ($200M), “Terminator: Dark Fate” ($196M), and “Joker: Folie à Deux” ($190M).

This rating comes only three years after “Oppenheimer” became Nolan’s first R-rated movie in over 20 years; the last time was with 2002’s “Insomnia.” Before that, “Memento” also garnered the same rating. “The Odyssey” is only the fourth film in Nolan’s career to receive this rating.

This is absolutely great news, and there should be no complaints about it—Nolan is swinging for the fences here. I always hope for Nolan to make R-rated cinema rather than safer PG-13 fare. It just gives Nolan more creative freedom, and with “The Odyssey,” a tale filled with brutal violence and sex, he needed the wiggle room.

Nolan wants to embrace the brutality and sensuality of Homer’s text without compromise. The source material includes gory battles, nudity, mutilations, and revenge killings. Throughout the story, Odysseus has sex with three different women, including Calypso the Goddess. Hell, at some point, Cyclops captures Odysseus’ men and brutally kills and eats several of them.

“The Odyssey” is written and directed by Nolan and based on Homer’s ancient Greek epic. The film stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, Elliot Page, Mia Goth, John Leguizamo, and Travis Scott. The film hits theaters on July 17, 2026, via Universal Pictures.