Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is the epic to end all epics: ‘We shot over 2 millions feet of film’
It’s almost impossible to imagine Christopher Nolan pulling off a feat bigger than all those he’s already achieved. Reinventing one of the most beloved comic book mythologies from the ground-up: check. (See: The Dark Knight trilogy.) Crafting action set-pieces that make equal sense played both forwards and backwards: check. (See: Tenet.) Turning the terrifying creation of the atomic bomb into a three-hour doom-laden epic that makes nearly $1 billion at the height of summer blockbuster season: check. (See: Oppenheimer.) He even cast actual David Bowie as Nikola Tesla. (See: The Prestige.) But to quote Inception: “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger darling.” So here it is. After Oppenheimer, and all those Oscar wins, Christopher Nolan is dreaming even bigger. The Odyssey begins.
For his 13th feature film as writer-director, Nolan is going back to where it all began – Homer’s epic Greek poem, one of the earliest stories in human history, a sprawling tale that sees Odysseus (here played by Matt Damon) make a decade-spanning journey home to his wife, Penelope, in the wake of the Trojan War, enduring unimaginable trials along the way. “Emma [Thomas, producer and Nolan’s wife] said it best when we first announced the project: it’s foundational,” the filmmaker tells Empire. “There’s a bit of everything in it. I mean, it truly contains all stories.” Having been originally hired to direct Troy, he’s been dreaming of this world for decades. “As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before. 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.”
Such a seismic story required Nolan – ever a practitioner of practical filmmaking on a grand scale – to level up. Big locations, big stars, big spectacle. “We shot over two million feet of film,” he reveals of the 91-day shoot. And much of that was out on the ocean, where Odysseus sets sail with his battle-hardened men. “It’s pretty primal!” Nolan laughs of the open seas. “I’ve been out on it for the last four months. 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.”
For a filmmaker like Christopher Nolan, this is the only way to make a film like The Odyssey. Like Odysseus himself, the plan is to both go big and go home. “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,” he says. “Because you’re confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you.” It’s quite literally Nolan vs. the world. And the winner, as ever, will be cinema.
Read Empire’s full, super-sized The Odyssey cover story – venturing to Christopher Nolan’s LA offices for a world-exclusive interview about his jaw-droppingly ambitious new epic, and getting the first word from Matt Damon on Odysseus’ wild journey – in the January 2026 issue of Empire, on sale Thursday 20 November. Pre-order a copy online here. The Odyssey comes to UK cinemas from 17 July 2026.
Stay tuned to empireonline.com for more The Odyssey exclusives, coming soon.
