Universal Responds to Major ‘The Odyssey’ Leak

Movie piracy has been a problem for a very long time. It’s gotten worse in recent years, whether because of the pandemic keeping people away from theaters, because streaming services are getting more expensive, because content can be hard to find and watch legally, or any number of other reasons. Now, pirates have come for one of the year’s biggest hit movies.

On Saturday, July 25, 2026, a pirated version of The Odyssey started to spread on X. “Someone upload ‘The Odyssey’ full movie on X. Can you believe it?” a person wrote after sharing the film. This version garnered millions of views and thousands of reposts before it was taken down. The next day, a lower-quality version of the movie appeared on X, but was removed around two hours later after accumulating almost 50,000 views. “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner,” the post later read.

Universal has now released a statement on the matter to The Hollywood Reporter: “We became aware of the unauthorized posting of the film and immediately initiated takedown protocols. We take copyright infringement seriously and will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights.”

Studios like Universal work vigorously to stop piracy, as do other groups in the industry. Sometimes this takes the form of going after sites where pirated films and TV shows are hosted. For instance, in 2024, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment worked with Vietnamese law enforcement to shut down piracy sites like FMovies, bflixz, flixtorz, movies7, myflixer, and aniwave. When it comes to pirated films appearing on social media, the amount of time it takes for them to come down can vary by company. X is known to be difficult to work with. It’s also worth noting that X owner Elon Musk has publicly disparaged The Odyssey.

It was to be expected that a major movie like The Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, would be pirated. Universal likely had a strategy in place to deal with the eventuality before the film opened in theaters on July 17, 2026. So far, the piracy has not dampened the movie’s success. After just two weekends in theaters, The Odyssey has already made over $600 million at the global box office and seems poised to become the fourth movie of 2026 to make over $1 billion.