Nolan's The Odyssey Becomes Universal's Biggest Film as Comcast Reports Peacock Profit

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is now the highest-grossing film in Universal's history. Universal's films have passed $5 billion at the global box office, according to Comcast's latest quarterly results, reported by Deadline.

The film opened in July and has grossed nearly $1.9 billion worldwide. In the United States and Canada, which the industry calls the domestic market, it has taken $625 million.

Results for Universal Studios, which covers the film studio and theme parks, showed EBITDA up 19% in the quarter. EBITDA is a company's operating profit before interest, tax and certain other costs, and it is a common way to compare earnings across businesses.

Peacock, Comcast's streaming service, posted its second profitable quarter in a row. It recorded $261 million of adjusted EBITDA and $1.8 billion in revenue. Its subscriber count held at 48 million, the same figure as in the previous quarter. Peacock's first profit, $189 million for the three months ending in June, was reported in July.

Across the whole company, Comcast reported proforma revenue of about $29.3 billion and proforma adjusted EBITDA of $9.1 billion for the three months ending in September. "Proforma" means the figures are adjusted to show the business as if certain changes had already happened. These numbers reflect the spin-off of Versant earlier this year. Versant holds Comcast's former NBCUniversal cable networks, apart from Bravo, along with some digital assets.

The rest of the picture was less upbeat. Comcast lost a net 144,000 domestic broadband customers, meaning more people cancelled home internet than signed up. It lost a net 274,000 video customers, while adding a net 368,000 wireless lines.

The biggest structural news is a plan to separate. Comcast intends to spin off NBCUniversal and Sky into a standalone company, split from its Connectivity & Platforms arm, which runs its internet, phone and television services. Mike Cavanagh, Comcast's current co-CEO, will run the NBCUniversal side after the split. Michael Angelakis, a former Comcast chief financial officer, will become chief executive of Comcast itself.

Comcast executives said they are making "meaningful progress" on the separation and that it remains on track. A spin-off means the shares of a business are handed to existing shareholders, creating a separate company that trades on its own.

Sky has also agreed to buy the television network operations of ITV, the British broadcaster, for £1.6 billion, or $2.1 billion. The deal is one of the larger moves in the UK broadcasting market this year.

For the people behind the box office figures, the numbers come down to crews, cinemas and the screen time a film gets. Those are the parts that rarely appear in a quarterly report, but they are where a hit like this is felt first.