Christopher Nolan, no stranger to stories of grand scale, has set sail for ancient Greece. Universal Pictures announced Nolan’s next project, “The Odyssey,” on Dec. 23, which came as a surprise due to speculation regarding the subject of Nolan’s next undertaking. While there have been rumors that his next project would be a vampire film or a helicopter action movie, in venturing back to earlier material and tackling the genre that pioneered the term “epic,” taking on Homer’s epic is as fitting as it is ambitious for Nolan.
Nolan’s previous works have transported audiences from Gotham City to World War II and the fringes of space. His works like “The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Dunkirk,” “Oppenheimer,” “Inception” and “Interstellar” share similar grand scales, drama and immersive storytelling. These films have brought Nolan an impressive amount of accolades, with “Oppenheimer” being the film to finally bring him his first Oscar for Best Picture, as well as many other 2024 Academy Awards. While filming for “The Odyssey” has yet to start, Universal’s announcement stated that it will be “shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology.”
“For me the great thing about movies has always been the large screen/large audience experience,” Nolan said in an interview at the Interstellar junket. “One of my earliest memories of going to the movies was going to see 2001 when I was seven years old and I’ve never forgotten the scale of that experience. I saw my first IMAX movie when I was 15 and immediately wanted to make features in that format at that point. So for me, working on this scale has been a long-held dream.”
As a director, Nolan has a few notable quirks. He is highly secretive about his projects, going as far as only allowing approximately 20 out of nearly 600 members on the set of “Dunkirk” to read the script. He also likes working with the same actors across multiple different projects, with his most frequent collaborators being Cillian Murphy in six movies and Michael Caine in eight. With this in mind, as well as the fact that he is one of the most acclaimed directors of the modern era, it makes sense that his adaptation of “The Odyssey” will be brimming with as much celebrity star power as its mythic gods and monsters suggest. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron are set to be among the cast of this film.
Homer’s “Odyssey” is a bold project to take on, being such a celebrated and established piece of literature. While it is likely that Nolan will do it justice considering the quality of his numerous other works, his adaptation of “The Odyssey” is almost guaranteed to face a high amount of scrutiny among classicists. The epic poem chronicles the story of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he journeys home from the Trojan War. Despite the perils and temptations he encounters, the entirety of the poem is infused with a heart-aching, bone-deep sense of longing for home. It will be interesting to see the way that Nolan translates this to the screen.
However, fans were tipped off by Daniel Richtman that unlike “Troy,” a 2004 adaptation of Homer’s “Iliad,” this adaptation will be less “grounded” and instead “embrace the mythical and fantastical elements” of “The Odyssey.” While some fans appreciate Nolan’s more realistic take on adaptations, like in “The Dark Knight” trilogy, this style has drawn some criticism. It will be exciting to see more of Nolan’s ungrounded, fantastical work, combined with ungrounded work in the realm of Homer adaptations.
Audiences have witnessed a resurgence of classical themes in mainstream media in recent years, with “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” in 2023 and “Gladiator II” in 2024. Hopefully, Nolan’s take on “The Odyssey” will push other filmmakers to create more adaptations, because the world of the classics is a treasure trove of source material.
Audiences can expect to see “The Odyssey” in theaters on July 17, 2026.
Tessa Kang is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the fall 2024 quarter. She can be reached at tokang@uci.edu.
Edited by Alaina Retodo
