Universal Is Skipping Influencer Screenings for Nolan's 'The Odyssey.' Critics See It First for Once.

Universal is not holding influencer screenings for "The Odyssey." Christopher Nolan's next movie, the most expensive thing the studio is putting out this year, will go straight to professional film critics after its world premiere in London on July 6. The trade press confirmed the plan this week. No early word-of-mouth shows for fan-site bloggers, no cards full of friendly reactions posted the night before the embargo. Critics get it first.

That sounds like a small scheduling note. It isn't. For the last few years, the standard launch for a movie chasing event status has run the other way. Studios invite influencers and online personalities to an early screening, let them post short, enthusiastic takes, and seed the timeline with positive buzz before any working critic has filed a word. By the time reviews land, the conversation is already set. Skipping that step on a movie this size is a real choice, and Universal made it on purpose.

What "The Odyssey" is skipping

The pitch for influencer screenings is simple. You get a wave of excitement, framed as organic, that runs ahead of the reviews. The risk is that the excitement curdles. Audiences have gotten better at spotting the seams. Earlier this month a "spontaneous" Pedro Pascal moment at Disneyland, tied to "The Mandalorian and Grogu," turned out to be a staged event with influencers, and the internet noticed within hours.

Universal has its own fresh example, and it is the more telling one. Last month the studio ran influencer screenings for Steven Spielberg's "Disclosure Day." One early reaction called it "Spielberg's best film in 20 years," and the line went viral. Then the review embargo lifted weeks later and the actual critics were cooler. Several of them name-checked that quote in their write-ups as a marker of how overheated the pre-release noise had gotten. BCN's own read on "Disclosure Day" put it plainly: the best-made movie of the summer, and a half-step too sure of itself. The buzz wrote a check the movie covered but didn't clear.

That pattern is not unique to one film. Critic Jordan Ruimy at World of Reel, who cheered the decision ("Now, this is showing confidence in your movie"), pointed to "Wuthering Heights," "Wicked: For Good," and "Mickey 17" as recent cases where early influencer raves hinted at awards heat and the real reviews came in muted.

Two ways to read it

The generous reading, and the one the studio would like you to take, is confidence. You don't need a manufactured head start when you have Nolan, IMAX, and a cast this deep. Let the critics see it cold and trust the movie to carry its own word of mouth.

The other reading is more interesting. If skipping influencer screenings now counts as a flex, then holding them has started to mean the opposite. The tactic was supposed to signal that a studio had a crowd-pleaser worth shouting about. It may have flipped into a tell, the move a studio makes when it is worried the reviews won't be kind. Universal sending its prestige tentpole straight to critics, weeks after watching the influencer route backfire on Spielberg, reads like a company that did the math on which signal it wanted to send.

Either way, working critics catch a small break. As Ruimy noted, press often have to review these movies from the same 7 p.m. influencer-packed screenings, which is a lousy way to watch anything. Universal is reportedly putting "The Odyssey" in front of critics starting around July 7, likely in morning shows. That is a better room to judge a movie in.

The movie under all of this

"The Odyssey" is Nolan's first feature since "Oppenheimer." Matt Damon plays Odysseus, with Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and the ensemble runs through Tom Holland, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, and Elliot Page. Universal is opening it July 17 in IMAX and premium large formats, the kind of release built for the biggest screens a city has. The London premiere lands July 6.

So the early-access experiment has a hard deadline. Whatever the first critics make of it, their reactions will be the first ones out, with no influencer chorus softening the ground ahead of them. If the reviews are strong, Universal looks shrewd and the influencer-screening model takes another dent. If they aren't, the studio handed its harshest readers the first and loudest word on a very expensive movie. The embargo will settle it, and for once that is the whole point.