With $850 million in worldwide ticket sales, Christopher Nolan’s dark historical epic Oppenheimer has achieved yet another incredible box office milestone.

The film, which stars Cillian Murphy as the alleged “father of the atomic bomb,” has so far made $542.7 million overseas and $311 million in North America.

Expectations are still being crushed by the movie, especially for a grim, R-rated biographical historical drama that primarily takes place in gloomy rooms full of fast-talking academics and politicians.

At this pace, the $900 million milestone is reachable, and observers of the box office never anticipated that we’d be so close to $1 billion. 

It was produced for $100 million and will yield enormous profits for Nolan and Universal, who provided financial support.

Oppenheimer has overtaken Inception ($837 million) as Nolan’s third-highest-grossing movie after seven weeks of release, after only The Dark Knight ($1 billion) and The Dark Knight Rises ($1.08 billion). 

In 59 foreign markets, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, India, Brazil, Spain, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, it has become the director’s highest-grossing film of all time.

It managed to surpass new entries in blockbuster franchises like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($845 million) and Fast X ($704 million) to rank as the third highest-grossing release of the year, behind Barbie ($1.36 billion) and The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.35 billion).

A few further achievements include being the biggest R-rated movie of the year before John Wick Chapter 4 ($187 million) and being Universal’s highest-grossing R-rated movie (and the studio’s first R-rated movie to exceed $300 million).

Oppenheimer has managed to hold a spot in the top five of the box office rankings in North America for seven straight weeks. At any time, but especially during the hectic summer, that is a tremendous accomplishment.

Oppenheimer has generated $170 million from screens in the premium format worldwide. 

The top four were $2 billion blockbusters Avatar and its sequel The Way of Water, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Avengers: Endgame making this the fifth-highest-grossing Imax film of all time. 

Oppenheimer had a $30.5 million worldwide debut this week in China, with $9.3 million coming from Imax screens.

Imax’s CEO Rich Gelfond said, “In its impressive debut in China, ‘Oppenheimer’ showed that it’s nowhere near finished dazzling audiences worldwide with its bold and uncompromising vision.”