Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson describe Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ as epic, gruelling and ambitious

"There's real intimacy and real humanity in the soundtrack." Universal has unveiled a behind-the-scenes featurette for The Odyssey, this time introducing us to some of the first sounds from the score for the epic ancient Greek adventure. The 3 minute video shows composer Ludwig Göransson working on creating the score with a few other musicians. I won't be surprised if he wins another Oscar for this just like he did with Oppenheimer. He explains that Chris Nolan asked him to highlight two specific Greek instruments: the aulos and lyre. Nolan's take on Homer's iconic ancient Greek poem, The Odyssey is a mythic action thriller shot across the world – the entire film is shot on IMAX film cameras bringing this foundational saga to life grander than ever. The epic story follows Odysseus in his perilous, long journey home after the Trojan War, encountering Polyphemus, the Sirens, Circe, and eventually with his reunion with his wife, Penelope, on the island Ithaca. The movie stars Matt Damon as our hero Odysseus + a huge ensemble cast including Tom Holland as Telemachus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, & many others. I'm so excited to watch this movie on an IMAX screen, but just as excited to hear this next unique aural creation from Göransson. Only […]

Matt Damon in The Odyssey, which is released in cinemas in July 2026The whole world has been waiting for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey with bated breath ever since the project was announced in 2024.Nolan’s first film since Oppenheimer’s Oscars sweep, The Odyssey is an epic tale of war, love and loss with a stacked all-star cast, and marks the director’s first movie shot entirely with IMAX cameras.At last, the years-long wait for the British filmmaker’s 13th movie is almost over, with its release now less than two months away.Excitingly, plenty about The Odyssey is still shrouded in mystery, but here is everything we do know about one of this year’s most talked-about movies...What is The Odyssey about?The Odyssey is based on an epic poem by the ancient Greek writer Homer, which follows the King of Ithaca, Odysseus, on his harrowing 10-year journey home after the Trojan War. Over the course of his voyage, Odysseus battles numerous mythical monsters, including a cyclops as well as sirens and deadly sorceresses, before finally making it back to his homeland and family.The story predominantly explores the drive to protect one’s family, loyalty and the use of brain over brawn to succeed.Matt Damon takes on the lead role of Odysseus in Christopher Nolan's new filmWhich stars are in the cast of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey?It’s no great surprise that A-listers are queuing up to work with Christopher Nolan, and the cast of The Odyssey is a real who’s who of Hollywood.Matt Damon is taking on the lead role as Odysseus, with Anne Hathaway playing his wife Penelope and Tom Holland appearing as his son Telemachus.Robert Pattinson will play Odysseus’ rival Antinous, a suitor for Penelope, and is joined by his Dune and The Drama co-star Zendaya, who will be playing the Greek goddess Athena.Zendaya is set to play Athena in The OdysseyAlso playing pivotal characters are Charlize Theron as the sea witch Calypso, and Lupita Nyong’o, who is also set to play both Helen of Troy and her sister, Clytemnestra. Rapper Travis Scott also appears in the film, playing a poet figure, with Mia Goth portraying the maidservant Melantho, John Leguizamo appearing as Odysseus’ friend Eumaeus, The Bear’s Jon Bernthal playing Spartan king Menelaus and The Smashing Machine director Benny Safdie taking on the role of Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon.Rounding out the cast are Minority Report’s Samantha Morton as the mythical Circe and Yesterday’s Himesh Patel as Odysseus’ second-in-command, Eurylochus.Logan Marshall Green and Elliot Page are also in the film, although neither’s role has been officially revealed. Christopher Nolan fans will know the director has a penchant for working with the same actors across different projects, and many of his The Odyssey actors have appeared in his past movies.Anne Hathaway starred in both The Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, while Matt Damon also appeared in Interstellar, as well as Oppenheimer.Robert Pattinson and Himesh Patel both appeared in Tenet, while Elliot Page worked with the filmmaker back in 2010’s Inception and Benny Safdie had a minor role in Oppenheimer. Anne Hathaway will play a key role in The Odyssey, which marks her third time working with Christopher NolanWhat has Christopher Nolan said about The Odyssey?Compared to many of his peers, Christopher Nolan is known for his love of practical effects and shooting out in the real world, rather than relying on CGI and green-screen technology.The Odyssey will be no different, with the cast shooting in locations as varied as Scotland, Morocco, Italy and Iceland.“By embracing the physicality of the real world in the making of the film, you do inform the telling of the story in interesting ways,” the Dunkirk filmmaker told Empire in November last year. “Because you’re confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you.”During a recent appearance on The Late Show back in May, Christopher told Stephen Colbert that he considered The Odyssey to be the original Marvel movie.He claimed: “Even comic book culture, whether you’re talking about Marvel or D.C. or all the rest, a lot of it comes directly from the Homeric Epics.“The thing about Homer is, nobody knows if that was a person. Homer, in a way, is the sort of George Lucas of his time.”Christopher Nolan's last film, Oppenheimer, earned him the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best DirectorWhen asked what made him want to adapt The Odyssey for the big screen, he admitted that a subplot involving Odysseus’ dog Argos had really stood out to him.He explained: “I’m a new dog owner. I’d never had a dog growing up. I didn’t have a dog when my kids were young. We denied that, and then as soon as they left for college, we got a dog.“They love the dog, too, when they get to visit. I decided to do The Odyssey because it’s the ultimate dog story.”What has the cast of The Odyssey said about the new movie?Lead actor Matt Damon teased to Empire back in November that The Odyssey is “exactly what you want [from] a summer movie”, describing shooting it as “the best experience of my career”.In a more recent interview with GQ, he shared how the film felt more like the big-budget films he made in the early years of his career.He explained: “It was a really weird movie for me personally in the sense that I had almost a nostalgic feeling the entire time I was making it, because it felt like the movies when I started working. And I know that that’s going away.”Matt theorised that, because of the way that the industry is headed, The Odyssey could well be the last of its kind.“I knew that this was the last chance I was going to have to do something like this,” he claimed, adding: “I don’t think people are going to be given the resources to shoot movies that way for much longer.”Tom Holland also called The Odyssey his “proudest achievement” in an April interview with GQ.Spider-Man actor Tom Holland will play Telemachus in The Odyssey“I can tell you that it is an absolute masterpiece, and I’m taking myself out of that equation. Chris Nolan’s movie is fantastic,” the Spider-Man actor said. “It’s unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before.”Tom promised fans they are going to be “blown away by the set pieces and sequences,” thanks to the scale of Nolan’s film. “I was absolutely blown away by the scale, the scope, his ability to navigate such an intricate and heartfelt story in the middle of this insane kind of action movie,” he enthused.Charlize Theron also backed up Matt and Tom’s comment about the filming experience.The Oscar winner told Elle that making the Greek epic was “one of the best experiences that I’ve ever had”, stating: “All of us had a certain personality of wanting to push harder. And when you put a group of those kinds of people together, it’s pretty amazing what they can accomplish.”And rewarding though the experience might have been, the stars have made no secret of the fact that the shoot was an especially tough one.Matt admitted to GQ in June: “Every time we’d go somewhere, we’d be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier’. And then it’s raining sideways and it’s fucking freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer’.“I’ve never seen people look so exhausted,” Robert Pattinson added about the experience in the same GQ article. “And this was only a third of the way.”He continued: “I started a third of the way through the movie, and they’d already been to [two] countries by that point and people just looked like… I mean, at the end of every day people were broken.”Some critics have already taken issue with The Odyssey’s historical accuracyCostumes in The Odyssey were certainly a talking point long before the film's releaseAs soon as The Odyssey’s first trailer dropped in December, sceptics wasted no time pointing out how historically incorrect they felt the armour and costumes looked.In a Time interview from May, the director responded to his detractors, insisting that his research was thorough when putting together The Odyssey, and pointing out that our knowledge of the Bronze Age is based on “very fragmentary archaeological records”.He said of the cynics: “Hopefully they’ll enjoy the film, even if they don’t agree with everything. We had a lot of scientists complain about Interstellar. But you just don’t want people to think that you took it on frivolously.”There was also some discourse during filming, when the director’s location choices were met with backlash.Matt Damon and Zendaya were reported to be filming a sequence in Dakhla, a city in the Western Sahara that has been under Moroccan occupation for the last 50 years.María Carrión, the executive director of Western Sahara International Film Festival, accused the director, his actors and his crew – whether knowingly or unknowingly – of “contributing to Morocco’s repression of the Sahrawi people and to the Moroccan regime’s efforts to normalise its occupation of Western Sahara” by filming in the region.While the filmmaker has not directly responded to these comments, The Guardian has claimed that The Odyssey’s shoot in Dakhla was completed in around four days, and was already over by the time the festival organisers raised their concerns.Although some were concerned with the costume and location choices of The Odyssey, there’s also been a separate backlash centred on its casting.Some online commentators have questioned why a movie based on Homer’s Greek epic appears to have no Greek actors confirmed in the principal cast.Greek City Times even published an open letter which argues that Greek people are being ignored in a story so deeply rooted in Greek culture, history and identity.Similarly, the decision for all of the characters to speak in American accents was one that raised eyebrows. Unfortunately, The Odyssey has also been met with racist backlash over its castingOscar winner Lupita Nyong'o will play two characters in The OdysseyMeanwhile, certain right-wing parts of the internet regrettably exploded when it was revealed that Lupita Nyong’o would playing Helen of Troy, described in mythology as “the most beautiful woman in the world”.One such critic was Elon Musk, who has spent the last few months complaining on social media about Lupita’s inclusion.“Casting a Black woman to play a White woman in a foundational work of European literature is no more right than casting a White man to play Shaka Zulu!” the X owner claimed, referring to the South African king, while also Elon branding Nolan “an anti-White racist”.Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh claimed in another X post that “not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,’” despite the star being named People’s Most Beautiful Woman after first rising to fame.Lupita has since addressed the racist backlash, reminding those who have an issue with her casting that The Odyssey is a “mythological story”.“Our cast is representative of the world. I’m not spending my time thinking of a defence,” she told Elle in May 2026. “The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.”She added: “It spans worlds. So that’s why the cast is what it is. We’re occupying the epic narrative of our time.”Nolan praised the Oscar-winning actor during the same article, enthusing: “The strength and the poise were so important to the character of Helen. And Lupita makes it look effortless.“I’m sure there’s a tremendous amount of discipline and training that goes into projecting that kind of poise and feeling the emotion bubbling beneath the character, the layers of the character right there underneath.”Has The Odyssey been adapted for the screen before?While Christopher Nolan’s take isn’t the first adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, it looks to be the biggest and most epic adaptation to date.Kirk Douglas previously starred in an Italian version of the story in 1954 called Ulysses, while the Coen brothers’ 2000 musical-comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou? turned Odysseus into an escaped prisoner in the American South.The most recent adaptation of The Odyssey came in 2024, with the film The Return.Starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, the movie covered only the last act of the story, depicting Odysseus pretending to be a suitor to win his wife back – and killing the men trying to pursue her.When will The Odyssey release in cinemas?Mark your calendars – Christopher Nolan’s take on The Odyssey will hit theatres on July 17 2026.Is there trailer for The Odyssey?There certainly is. Give it a watch for yourself below:READ MORE:9 Things To Spot In The New Trailer For Christopher Nolan's The OdysseyRobert Pattinson Wanted 'Leopard Underpants' For His 'Sleazy' Odyssey CharacterMatt Damon Says The Odyssey Is 'The Biggest' Film He's 'Ever Done'

Matt Damon in character as OdysseusThe stars of The Odyssey have admitted that filming the much-hyped Christopher Nolan epic was every bit as gruelling as you might expect.Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson are two of the A-listers in the star-studded cast of the new movie, based on the ancient Greek poem by Homer which tells the story of Odysseus’ mammoth 10-year journey home after the Trojan War.While Nolan already has a reputation for preferring practical effects over CGI and filming on location over green screen, with The Odyssey taking the cast and crew to seven different countries to help them create the film’s ambitious battle shots, stunts and mammoth travel sequences.“The joke on the crew was we didn’t have a single easy location,” Matt told GQ as part of a new interview.“Every time we’d go somewhere, we’d be like, ‘Well, Iceland will be easier’. And then it’s raining sideways and it’s fucking freezing. Iceland was like, ‘Yeah, easy? Hey, hold my beer.’ ” The shoot concluded on a lot in Los Angeles, with Matt recalling: “Sure enough, we showed up [to the set] and Chris has two jet engines blowing so much water at us.“So it was kind of a fitting end. Even the controlled environment was cold, wet, and a little bit miserable.”The shoot for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey was an especially grueling oneAs for Robert, he wasn’t required on set until the shoot was already well underway.“I’ve never seen people look so exhausted,” the former Twilight star admitted to the magazine of his first days on set. “And this was only a third of the way.”He continued: “I started a third of the way through the movie, and they’d already been to [two] countries by that point and people just looked like… I mean, at the end of every day people were broken.”Robert Pattinson as Antinous in The OdysseyOn Wednesday, The Odyssey released a new behind-the-scenes featurette, in which Matt spoke about how the film is “the biggest” he’s ever been involved in, in terms of its scale and “ambition”.He and Robert are joined in the cast by Oscar winners Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron, as well as newcomers to the Nolan-verse, Zendaya and Tom Holland.The Odyssey hits cinemas on Friday 17 July. Read Matt Damon and Robert Pattinson’s interview in GQ here.MORE FILM NEWS:Robert Pattinson Wanted 'Leopard Underpants' For His 'Sleazy' Odyssey CharacterTom Holland's Comments About Playing Spider-Man After 30 Have Come Back To Haunt HimMatt Damon Says The Odyssey Is 'The Biggest' Film He's 'Ever Done'

Robert Pattinson on the set of Christopher Nolan's The OdysseyRobert Pattinson has opened up about what fans can expect from his “sleazy” character in The Odyssey.The Tenet star has reunited with filmmaker Christopher Nolan for his big-screen adaptation of the epic Greek poem, in which he’s due to play Antinous, a pivotal suitor of Penelope’s who tries to win her over while her husband is still at sea.Speaking to GQ about the character, the British actor claimed he took inspiration from James Woods’ character in Martin Scorsese’s Casino.“My character’s a little like James Woods in Casino. That was my inspiration for it,” he explained. “I thought it’d be quite nice to see it in Ithaca. And he’s, like, a little sleazy.”Robert went on to share that he had an idea for his Odyssey wardrobe that could help him get even further into his character’s mindset.He recalled: “I kept saying at my costume fitting, I was like, ‘I really want to have leopard underpants’. I want to have it just coming out of my skirt, a little sparkly fur.”Robert Pattinson as Antinous in The OdysseyWhether or not he got his wish remains to be seen...Matt Damon takes the lead in The Odyssey, which boasts a star-studded cast including Robert’s The Drama and Dune co-star Zendaya, as well as her real-life husband Tom Holland.Also in the cast are Oscar winners Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyong’o, as well as Mia Goth, Elliot Page, John Leguizamo, Himesh Patel, The Bear’s Jon Bernthal and rapper Travis Scott.On Wednesday, producers released a new behind-the-scenes featurette in which Matt admitted the film is the “biggest” he’s ever been a part of in terms of its scale and “ambition”.The Odyssey is also Christopher Nolan’s first big-screen release since Oppenheimer became a critical and commercial smash, sweeping the board with seven wins at the 2024 Oscars.The Odyssey hits cinemas on 17 July 2026.READ MORE:9 Things To Spot In The New Trailer For Christopher Nolan's The OdysseyMatt Damon Says The Odyssey Is 'The Biggest' Film He's 'Ever Done'Lupita Nyong'o Addresses Racist Backlash Over Her Casting In The Odyssey

Matt Damon in character as OdysseusIf you weren’t already hyped for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey, you definitely will be when you listen to the cast talking about how epic it is.With not long left to go until the much-hyped film hits cinemas, Nolan’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Oppenheimer is already one of the most talked-about new releases of 2026.The film adapts Homer’s epic Greek poem and follows the King of Ithaca, Odysseus, on his 10-year struggle to return home after the Trojan War. On his mammoth journey, he encounters mythical monsters and violent enemies, using his wit to defeat suitors plotting to take his thrones.In a new video featurette to promote the film, Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus, hyped up the scale of the mythological epic. “This is definitely the biggest movie I’ve ever done in my career, in terms of its scale,” the actor, who also appeared in Oppenheimer, teased, before adding: “[It’s] definitely the biggest movie I have done in terms of its ambition.”Zendaya, who plays Athena, also praised Nolan’s ability to “do scope and action and fantasy, but also heart and humanity and depth and rawness”.Matt Damon and Zendaya in The OdysseyHer co-star, and real-life husband, Tom Holland, who plays Odysseus’ son Telemachus, also explained how it felt that this was Nolan’s best work to date. “I feel like this particular picture is an accumulation of all of his skills and all of his experiences and him at his best, going for it,” he enthused.Last month, in GQ, Matt reflected on how Hollywood films as epic and ambitious as The Odyssey are now becoming an anomaly.“Because of where the movie business is going, it was a really weird movie for me personally, in the sense that I had almost a nostalgic feeling the entire time I was making it, because it felt like movies were when I started working,” he explained.Matt added: “And I know that that’s going away. I knew that this was the last chance I was ever going to have to do something like this.”The Odyssey filmed on location, with the shoot taking the cast and crew to seven countries in total.“Every single location on this movie would’ve been the hardest location on any other movie I’ve ever done,” Matt told GQ. “And they just went back-to-back.”The Odyssey is set to hit cinemas on 17 July.MORE FILM NEWS:Hannah Waddingham Finally Sets The Record Straight On Wicked Film Audition RumoursDirector Who Worked With Val Kilmer Brands Actor The 'Worst' Person He's 'Ever Known'17 Behind-The-Scenes Secrets You Probably Didn't Know About The Making Of Obsession