The Dark Knight Rises Is No Longer Christopher Nolan's Biggest Box Office Hit Ever

Christopher Nolan has a new highest-grossing movie. The Oscar-winning director is currently riding high, with his film adaptation of "The Odyssey" having ruled the box office ever since it premiered in July. Now, Nolan's epic has surpassed another epic of sorts, one of the superhero variety, at the global box office.

As of this writing, "The Odyssey" has earned $1.1 billion in theaters worldwide. It will soon pass "Transformers: Age of Extinction" ($1.105 billion) and "Skyfall" ($1.108 billion), itself the biggest "James Bond" movie ever, to enter the list of the top 40 highest-grossing film ever. Perhaps more importantly, it's already overtaken 2012's "The Dark Knight Rises" ($1.08 billion) to become the top-grossing movie of Nolan's impressive career, unadjusted for inflation.

At the time of its release, "The Dark Knight Rises" gave DC an ending when it needed a beginning. Nolan's Batman trilogy was over, which is part of the reason why it was such a big hit, but DC was trying to start a cinematic universe to rival Marvel Studios'. It was happening as superheroes were experiencing a commercial peak. All of this to say, it's mighty impressive that "The Odyssey," an R-rated epic based on Homer's classic tale, has managed to overtake the finale to Nolan's much-beloved "Dark Knight" trilogy.

Nolan's latest earned another $110 million globally over this past weekend, meaning it still has a lot of gas left in the tank as well. By the end of its run, "The Odyssey" could easily surpass the $1.5 billion mark, joining movies like "The Avengers" and "Furious 7." It may ultimately climb into the top 15 of all time, if not higher.

This new record for Christopher Nolan truly cements just how far he's come since making "The Dark Knight" trilogy. "The Dark Knight" was simply too good to be ignored and became a $1 billion hit when few movies ever hit that mark in 2008. But rather than lean into franchise filmmaking, Nolan used the clout he'd built up by playing in the DC Comics sandbox to make large scale blockbusters of his own design.

Before concluding his Batman trilogy, Nolan made one of the biggest original box office hits ever with 2010's "Inception" ($839 million worldwide). Since finishing what he started with "The Dark Knight Rises," he's avoided franchises altogether, instead focusing his efforts on either other originals such as "Interstellar" and "Tenet" or historical motion pictures such as "Dunkirk" and "Oppenheimer."

It's all panned out phenomenally well. "Oppenheimer" ($975.8 million) was the highest-grossing biopic ever at the box office up until very recently. It also won Best Picture at the Oscars. Nolan has, in some ways, cemented his standing as the biggest movie star in the world. His name matters more than any actor's does currently when it comes to selling tickets. "The Odyssey" is only further proof of that. Nobody else could have turned that risky bet into record-breaking gold except Nolan.

In 2012, nothing seemed to be more important than a franchise like "Batman" to the health of the box office. Now? Nolan has established that he, as a filmmaker, is more financially important to the movie industry than Batman, if not most other individual franchises currently going today. He's in a class all his own.

"The Odyssey" is in theaters now.