The WWII Blockbuster That Beat ’Saving Private Ryan’ at the Box Office Storms New Streamer
Director Christopher Nolan‘s association with Universal continues to grow stronger. After Oppenheimer, his first film with the studio, he’s now putting together The Odyssey, which is set to be released next year. Until then, however, audiences can watch one of Nolan’s most acclaimed hits — that’s saying something, yes — on the Universal-owned Peacock streaming service. That’s where his blockbuster Dunkirk debuted on November 1. Released in 2017, Dunkirk became the movie that earned Nolan his first-ever Best Director Oscar nod; he’d go on to win in the category for Oppenheimer.
Interestingly, Oppenheimer beat Dunkirk at the box office to become the highest-grossing World War II movie of all time. Until 2023, Dunkirk had been the biggest WW2 movie ever, having overtaken Steven Spielberg‘s Saving Private Ryan during its theatrical run. Produced on a reported budget of around $100 million, Dunkirk grossed over $530 million at the worldwide box office. Saving Private Ryan had generated around $480 million worldwide in 1998. Oppenheimer, on the other hand, grossed more than $970 million globally, and will one day almost certainly become the third Nolan film to crack the coveted $1 billion mark, provided that it gets a regular re-release.
Dunkirk followed the tense evacuation of Allied soldiers from the French beach town of the same name as German forces closed in on them. In classic Nolan fashion, the movie played with time, and presented the rescue operation from three distinct points of view. It opened to near-unanimous praise, and is often ranked among the greatest war movies ever made, and certainly, among the best to be set during WW2. The movie is now sitting at a “certified fresh” 92% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “Dunkirk serves up emotionally satisfying spectacle, delivered by a writer-director in full command of his craft and brought to life by a gifted ensemble cast that honors the fact-based story.”
The Evacuation of Dunkirk Has Inspired Several Films
Starring an ensemble led by newcomer Fionn Whitehead, along with Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, Harry Styles, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, and several others, Dunkirk was the last Nolan movie to feature an original score by Hans Zimmer. The real-life evacuation was also dramatized in films such as Joe Wright‘s Atonement and Darkest Hour, and Lone Scherfig‘s comedy drama Their Finest, about the making of a propaganda movie based on the real-life events at Dunkirk.
You can watch Nolan’s movie on Peacock now, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
A soldier looks up while standing alongside hundreds of other soldiers on a boat in Dunkirk
Release Date
July 19, 2017
Runtime
107 minutes
Producers
Emma Thomas, Greg Silverman
