Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has turned a 3,000-year-old Greek epic into a box-office beast, and Comcast is now reaping the rewards of its own cinematic journey. The film has crossed $1.34 billion worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. Its theatrical success has helped Comcast score a third-quarter win, alongside a profit at its Peacock streaming service, even as cable revenue and theme parks struggled.

For Comcast, The Odyssey has proved that one wildly ambitious cinematic voyage can pay off, helping Peacock turn a profit while the company navigates choppier waters across its cable-and-media empire.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has turned an ancient Greek epic into a modern-day box-office monster, and Comcast is enjoying a little treasure of its own. The film’s extraordinary theatrical performance helped Universal Studios deliver an 18.6% increase in pretax profit, while Peacock recorded its second consecutive profitable quarter with $261 million in adjusted EBITDA. Not every part of Comcast’s empire, however, sailed quite so smoothly.

The numbers tell a tale of two very different voyages. Comcast’s total revenue fell 6.1% to $29.3 billion, but net income rose 3.5% to $3.45 billion, and adjusted earnings of $1.07 per share beat Wall Street expectations of 98 cents. Its media division also grew revenue by 13% to $5.36 billion, buoyed by World Cup soccer programming and Love Island USA.

The cable business, meanwhile, proved a far less triumphant journey. As per the 3rd quarter reports, Comcast lost 144,000 broadband customers during the quarter, exceeding both the 91,000 losses recorded a year earlier and analysts’ expectations of 116,800. Domestic video subscriptions also fell by 274,000, compared with 257,000 in the same period last year, as competition from mobile carriers and fiber providers intensified.

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With Comcast getting a helping hand from The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s epic continues to make the impossible look like just another day at the box office, even with La Bola Negra waiting in the wings, but it is not the first to do.

Hollywood has a long history of films accomplishing what once seemed impossible: rescuing studios from financial disaster, reviving struggling businesses, and changing the economics of filmmaking. The Odyssey has offered Comcast a similar helping hand, with its box-office success contributing to Universal Studios’ stronger performance. Yet some of cinema’s most remarkable turnarounds happened long before Christopher Nolan sent his Greek hero on another voyage.

When 20th Century Fox teetered after the costly production of Cleopatra, The Sound of Music became the phenomenal hit the studio desperately needed, earning approximately $286 million worldwide. Similarly, Marvel’s decision to launch its cinematic universe with Iron Man transformed a risky investment into a franchise powerhouse, while Disney’s Cinderella revived a debt-burdened animation studio and helped pave the way for Disneyland. Universal Pictures found its own miracle in Jaws, which helped establish the modern summer blockbuster.

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