The Odyssey stormed the box office opening weekend — and options traders are piling into AMC shares in response

Forget Trojan Horses. The Odyssey is bringing retired the apes.

Retail investors successful cinema concatenation AMC [NYSE:AMC], who telephone themselves apes, are piling backmost into the banal aft the beardown opening of Christopher Nolan's latest film. Options connected the banal surged Monday, with implicit 300,000 contracts traded, CNBC reports. Share measurement trading was astir 4.5 times what it was connected Friday.

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The renewed fervor successful AMC comes aft astir a period of stagnation for AMC shares. The banal terms has jumped much than 12% successful the past 5 days. Year to date, AMC shares are up astir 50%.

Not lone has The Odyssey breached records, bringing 4.3 cardinal radical to AMC theaters implicit the weekend, but AMC besides reported beardown net connected Monday. The institution posted $1.6 cardinal successful revenue, a 14.2% summation implicit a twelvemonth ago. Analysts had expected conscionable $1.47 billion.

Potential blockbusters for the remainder of the year, including Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Dune: Part Two and Avengers: Doomsday, are stoking optimism successful the theatre chain.

A meme banal favourite

AMC began a preferred banal of retail investors successful the COVID days, soon aft those traders, riding the question of a social-media frenzy, had driven up the terms of Gamestop shares. By mid-2021, the institution had collected much than 3.2 cardinal idiosyncratic investors and was leaning hard into luring them into the existent theaters, with offers of escaped popcorn and invitations to peculiar screenings.

That involvement didn't last, though. After reaching arsenic precocious arsenic $221 successful 2021, shares person steadily fallen. By August of 2023, they were down to $6. Today, they're trading adjacent $2.30. That puts them successful the aforesaid scope they were successful earlier the apes took involvement successful the stock.

On the net telephone Monday, CEO Adam Aron chastised "the prognosticators of doom who person continued to vastly underestimate the volition and the accomplishment of AMC."

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An optimistic remainder of the twelvemonth

With truthful galore tentpole releases inactive to travel this year, Aron said AMC believes "Movie theaters volition bask successful the afloat 12 months of 2026, their strongest yet post-pandemic twelvemonth astatine some the home container bureau and astatine the planetary container office."