Director Christopher Nolan wants people to watch The Odyssey on the biggest screen possible - but two million people reportedly viewed a social media post containing a leaked copy of his film this weekend.

Film industry outlet Variety reported that an X message embedded with a high-quality version of the film gathered 2.1 million views in two-and-a-half hours on Saturday, before the account was suspended.

"The full odyssey movie in a tweet, as nolan intended," one user joked.

Nolan shot the entire three-hour movie on 70mm film, a large, high-resolution format designed for giant Imax screens.

"The whole Odyssey film in an embedded video on Twitter. Crazy," wrote someone in a post on X.

"Someone leaked The Odyssey movie in HD. I thought it was fake but it's true," said another user.

The Hollywood Reporter said a lower-quality version appeared on X on Sunday, and was removed two hours later after amassing almost 50,000 views.

In response, film studio Universal said: "We became aware of the unauthorised 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."

The leak is unlikely to do significant harm to the film's box office performance - it earned $215m (£160m) around the world in its second weekend, taking its total to $640m (£480m).