With his most epic cinematic outing yet, Christopher Nolan was determined to use as much practical filmmaking as possible.
The 2x Oscar-winning writer and director of The Odyssey revealed that he “shot over two million feet of film” during the 91-day shoot, much of which was actually at sea to capture the grand scale of Homer’s ancient Greek epic.
“It’s pretty primal! I’ve been out on it for the last four months,” he told Empire. “We got the cast who play the crew of Odysseus’ ship out there on the real waves, in the real places. And yeah, it’s vast and terrifying and wonderful and benevolent, as the conditions shift. We really wanted to capture how hard those journeys would have been for people. And the leap of faith that was being made in an unmapped, uncharted world.”
Nolan explained that by “embracing the physicality of the real world,” he was “confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you.”
An adaptation of one of the first stories in human history, The Odyssey follows Odysseus (Matt Damon) through the incredible trials and mythical encounters he faces on his decade-long journey home to wife Penelope after the Trojan War.
Christopher Nolan
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For Nolan—who was tapped to direct Troy (2004), based on Homer’s Iliad, but ended up doing Batman Begins (2005) for Warner Bros.–his adaptation of The Odyssey has been a long time coming.
“As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before,” explained Nolan. “And what I saw is that all of this great mythological cinematic work that I had grown up with – Ray Harryhausen movies and other things – I’d never seen that done with the sort of weight and credibility that an A-budget and a big Hollywood, IMAX production could do.”
Premiering July 17, 2026 in IMAX, The Odyssey also stars Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Bill Irwin, Samantha Morton, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, Rafi Gavron, Shiloh Fernandez, Mia Goth and more.
