Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. Branded 'Foolish Provocateurs' After Christopher Nolan Epic Secures £155m

Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. were branded 'foolish provocateurs' over the weekend after Christopher Nolan's new epic The Odyssey opened to a projected £155 million worldwide, despite their furious complaints about its so-called 'woke' casting.

The row erupted weeks before the film's release, when news broke that Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o had been cast as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page as a Greek soldier in Nolan's retelling of Homer's poem.

Musk and Trump Jr., who have built large online followings railing against 'woke' culture, publicly attacked the decisions and accused Hollywood of pushing an agenda. Their outrage was loud. The box office response, according to early estimates, has been louder.

The Odyssey Box Office Turns On Elon Musk 'Go Woke, Go Broke' Claim

The news came after media analyst Brian Lowry argued that Musk and Trump Jr. had picked the wrong cultural fight. Lowry said the pair had tried to turn Nolan's casting choices into evidence of a sinister plot, only to watch the film's opening weekend projections surge towards roughly $200 million, or around £155 million, worldwide.

'Musk and others sought to transform [Nolan's casting] into something nefarious, bizarrely arguing that the diverse casting represented some kind of cynical ploy,' Lowry wrote, before concluding that The Odyssey 'merely makes those conservative provocateurs sound foolish.'

In May, Musk had posted on social media: 'Shame on Chris Nolan for desecrating Homer! He will never live it down.' The following day, Trump Jr. shared an Instagram post laced with anti-trans rhetoric and a complaint that 'maybe one of these days Hollywood will learn to stop pushing this c— on us.'

It was the familiar slogan in slightly different clothing. For years, right-wing commentators have warned that studios which 'go woke' will 'go broke.' According to Lowry's reading of the numbers on The Odyssey, Universal Pictures is experiencing the opposite.

He reported that projections showed the film, which has been 'tailor-made to premium large-screen formats,' was on course to earn around $200 million globally in its opening weekend. 'Whatever the final tally,' he wrote, the haul 'should go a long way toward erasing the prospect of a 'go broke' scenario for Universal Pictures, the studio releasing the film.'

Nolan's 'Woke' Casting Row Was About Minutes, Not Hours

To recall, the storm around Nyong'o and Page created the impression, especially online, that Nolan had reengineered the ancient Greek saga around them. Lowry argued that this was wildly out of proportion to reality.

At nearly three hours long, The Odyssey 'continues the Oppenheimer director's personal war on moviegoers' bladders,' he wrote. Yet, in his view, both Nyong'o and Page appear on screen for only a few minutes each.

That point matters for more than pedantry. Lowry suggested that the real target of the backlash was Nolan himself, who, as a high-profile director, attracts the usual culture-war 'slings and arrows.' The casting controversy, in that telling, said more about the people trying to manufacture outrage than the performers who just turned up and did their jobs.

It is also where Lowry offers a slightly uncomfortable observation for progressives who might be tempted to celebrate the noise around Nyong'o and Page as a sign of sweeping change. The bulk of the story, and most of the screen time, still belongs to the film's white, non-trans leads, including Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway.

Nolan's ability to pull in that level of star, Lowry said, is now one of his key assets. 'The beauty of being Nolan, at this point, is that his reputation and track record enable him to attract identifiable talent, a la Zendaya, rapper Travis Scott and horror queen Mia Goth, for even smallish roles,' he wrote, describing it as 'a clever means of broadening the film's appeal.'

In other words, diversity is part of the picture but not the whole picture, and certainly not the financial gamble that Musk and Trump Jr. painted it to be.

Christopher Nolan Stays Above The Fight

Nolan himself has studiously refused to jump into the mud. When asked about the online criticism, he reportedly described such attacks as something that 'comes with the territory' and called them 'irrelevant.'

Lowry praised that approach, noting that the director appears to be 'basking in a torrent of critical praise' rather than trading barbs with social media critics. It is a studied kind of detachment, the posture of someone who has watched this stuff flare up and burn out before.

That silence has given others space to frame the debate for him. On one side, Musk and Trump Jr. used their platforms to accuse Hollywood of 'desecrating' Homer and forcing audiences to swallow politics along with their popcorn.

On the other, critics like Lowry have seized on the weekend's numbers as a cautionary tale for right-wing influencers who bet against big-ticket films because they contain a Black Helen of Troy or a trans soldier.

There is a bit of schadenfreude in that, and Lowry does not pretend otherwise. When he labels Musk and Trump Jr. 'foolish provocateurs,' he is not trying to soothe anyone.

The wider question, though, is whether any of this changes how films get made. A mega-director packs a cast with famous faces of varying backgrounds, screens fill up, and the culture war cycle moves on to the next target.

For studios watching the receipts, the lesson from The Odyssey is brutally simple. For the politicians and moguls who tried to turn it into a test case for 'go woke, go broke,' this weekend looked more like a losing fight.