Thanks to Stanley Kubrick, the year 2001 will forever be synonymous with a certain space odyssey. A quarter century later, Christopher Nolan is proclaiming 2026 the year of… The Odyssey. The Oscar-winning Oppenheimer filmmaker on Monday previewed the most revealing publicly available look yet at his sprawling retelling of Homer’s epic poem, featuring Matt Damon as stranded Greek warrior Odysseus encountering all sorts of trouble on his voyage home.
“No one can stand between me and home. Not even the gods,” Damon intones in the latest trailer, which unleashes the Cyclops and shows Robert Pattison’s conniving Antinous making his moves on Anne Hathaway‘s Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, while threatening Tom Holland‘s Telemachus, Odysseus and Penelope’s intrepid son. We also get our first look at Charlize Theron as Calypso, the nymph who captures Odysseus.
The two-and-a-half-minute trailer was first shown on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert before dropping online and comes three weeks after Nolan screened a portion of the film for exhibitors at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.
The April 15 presentation, which Nolan delivered as he claims he’s nearing a finished cut, also offered some insight into the difficulty the director experienced realizing his dream of an Odyssey for modern moviegoing audiences.
Details about Nolan’s next film have been difficult to come by because — well — it’s Christopher Nolan’s next film. And while technically, everything that you need to know about the next Christopher Nolan movie is that it’s the next Christopher Nolan movie, in the case of The Odyssey, there is a good deal of information that makes this particular project even more interesting than just being the new film from the director of Oppenheimer, Tenet, Inception, and the Dark Knight trilogy.
Here’s a rundown of everything we know about The Odyssey.
The CinemaCon Presentation
Nolan appeared solo in Las Vegas during the Universal Studio panel and shared that bringing the epic poem to life has been a journey worthy of its hero. “This film has been an absolute nightmare to film,” Nolan said.
He then shared some footage, including a conversation between Odysseus and Calypso, the nymph played by Charlize Theron, who traps the Greek leader for many years. The preview then shifted to the Trojan Horse sequence, which was previously previewed for Imax screenings of Sinners and One Battle After Another and is described below.
The First Trailer
The first publicly available footage was a two-minute spot that opens with Damon musing on his long-awaited return home from the battlefields of Troy after enduring “years of war.” But that trip turns out to be more difficult than anticipated as we see Odysseus and his men enduring various trials on their way across sea and land — including some cameos by creatures of Ancient Greek legend.
The Dec. 22 trailer drop followed the release of a six-minute “prologue” that played exclusively before Imax 70mm presentations of Sinners and One Battle After Another. That preview depicted Odysseus and his fellow Greek warriors inside the wooden steed, which is taken behind the gates of Troy by the unsuspecting foes. From there, Odysseus leads a stealth attack and opens the city gates to his fellow soldiers, where they launch the decisive battle.
The reaction to the Imax teaser was overwhelmingly positive with viewers claiming they’re “stunned” and calling the sequence a “staggering achievement in modern cinema.”
The Story
The Odyssey is based on one of the world’s oldest pieces of intellectual property. (Ducks as someone throws a leather-bound tome) For his 13th feature, Nolan is adapting Homer’s epic poem, chronicling the journeys of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, as he voyages home from the Trojan War, a trip that takes 10 years and costs him more than a few shipmates.
Along the way, the crew encounters a host of monsters, including a cyclops, sirens, a witch, and some cheese that turns men into pigs.
Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, has to fend off a group of suitors who are a little too eager to step into the void left by her missing husband. Assisting her in handling the over-interested parties is her son with Odysseus, Telemachus.
The Cast
Everyone is in this movie.
Or practically everyone. The casting announcements for Nolan’s The Odyssey read as a list of some of the biggest and most in-demand stars working today. Matt Damon leads the film as Odysseus, with Tom Holland taking the role of Telemachus.
The rest of the cast includes Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, Charlize Theron, Elliot Page, Hamesh Patel, Benny Safdie, Mia Goth, John Leguizamo, and Samantha Morton.
Some who was going to be in The Odyssey, Cosmo Jarvis from FX’s Shogun, was forced to drop out of the project before filming on his scenes began due to scheduling conflicts. Prometheus‘ Logan Marshall-Green is replacing him in the unspecified role.
The Production
The Odyssey is the first narrative feature to be filmed entirely in Imax 70mm. Nolan has experimented with the large-format since 2008’s The Dark Knight, filming more and more with Imax gear as his career progressed. This seems to be the natural endpoint of that experimentation, and it’s hard to imagine a more appropriate story for the challenge.
Nolan revealed in the Empire Magazine feature that he and director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema shoot more than two million feet of film. For reference, it was rumored at the the time that Kevin Kostner had gone way overboard with Dances with Wolves when production was said to have shot one million feet of film.
The Teaser
On July 1, attached to preview screenings of another big Universal Pictures property, Jurassic World: Rebirth, the first teaser for The Odyssey debuted in theaters, which makes sense considering Nolan’s support for the sanctity of the theatrical experience. But as opponents of the sanctity of the theatrical experience are wont to do, people quickly started filming the teaser with their phones and uploading it to social media sites.
The preview is a true teaser, largely setting the tone of the piece and prominently featuring one scene between Bernthal and Holland, who is asking about word of his missing father. Also heard is some voice over from an unseen character — most likely Pattinson’s — who references Zeus.
The most of see of Odysseus is a sweeping shot of the sea and a person one could presume is Damon, lying atop some floating debris.
The Release Date
The Odyssey will open in theaters on July 17, 2026.
This story was originally published on July 2 and updated on Nov. 14, Dec. 12, Dec. 22, April 16, and May 4.
