A film by Christopher Nolan

THE ODYSSEY

Defy the gods

07.17.26Now playing in theaters everywhere

Sing in me, Muse

For three thousand years, the poem waited
for a camera worthy of it.

Homer’s Odyssey — the foundational saga of the wanderer, the wrath of gods, and the long road home — becomes Christopher Nolan’s most ambitious film: a mythic action epic shot across six countries and realized entirely on IMAX film, the first motion picture in history to claim it.

3,000years in the waiting

173minutes of odyssey

1stfilm shot entirely on IMAX film

The journey home

Ten years. One sea.
Every monster between.

Troy has fallen. Odysseus, king of Ithaca, sets sail for home — and the sea begins to write his legend. Scroll on: the voyage is the story.

The Log
The Voyage Home

After ten years besieging Troy, Odysseus — “the man of twists and turns” — points his black ship toward Ithaca: to Penelope, to Telemachus, to the life the war suspended. The sea has other plans.
I
The Fall of Troy

A wooden horse on a silent beach, and a city burns. Victory plants the seed of ruin: in the ashes, the gods begin to watch one man too closely.
II
Polyphemus, the Cyclops

In a cave of bones, wit is the only weapon. “Nobody” escapes the giant — but pride speaks his true name, and Poseidon hears it.
III
The Wrath of Poseidon

The earth-shaker unmakes the sea itself. Masts snap like reeds; the crew scatters to the foam. Odysseus learns what it costs to defy a god.
IV
Athena’s Aegis

One god curses him; another refuses to abandon him. Athena, grey-eyed goddess of wisdom, moves unseen between mortal and fate.
V
Circe of Aeaea

On an island outside time, a witch-goddess turns men to swine — and one man, for a year, to a guest. The way home runs through the house of the dead.
VI
The Sirens’ Song

Lashed to the mast, ears open while his crew row deaf, Odysseus becomes the only man to hear the song and live. It promises to know everything. It almost keeps its promise.
VII
Scylla & Charybdis

Six heads above, a devouring whirlpool below. Between monster and abyss there is no good course — only the one a captain can live with.
VIII
Calypso’s Ogygia

Seven years of paradise, offered immortality, held by a nymph’s love like a tide that will not turn. Every dusk he watches the sea that stands between him and home.
IX
Ithaca

The beggar who steps ashore is a king. The bow no suitor can string answers his hand. Twenty years after Troy, Odysseus comes home — and takes it back.

Gods & monsters & men

An ensemble worthy of the poem

Nolan marshals one of the deepest casts ever assembled for a single epic. Turn each stone.

Matt Damon at the world premiere of The Odyssey

The wanderer

Matt Damon is Odysseus

King of Ithaca. The great strategist of Troy; a “very wily person,” in Nolan’s words. Twenty years lost to war and sea, armed home with nothing but wit and a bow.

Tom Holland
Telemachus
The prince who sails for word of a father he never knew.
Anne Hathaway
Penelope
The queen who outwits a hall of suitors for twenty years.
Robert Pattinson
Antinous
Proudest of the suitors feasting on another man’s house.
Zendaya
Athena
Goddess of wisdom; the wanderer’s unseen shield.
Lupita Nyong’o
Helen of Troy · Clytemnestra
Two faces of the war’s making and its reckoning.
Charlize Theron
Calypso
The nymph of Ogygia, offering eternity at the price of home.
Samantha Morton
Circe
Witch-goddess of Aeaea, keeper of the road through the dead.
Jon Bernthal
Menelaus
King of Sparta, for whose stolen queen a thousand ships burned.
Benny Safdie
Agamemnon
Commander of the Greeks; the victor whom home betrayed.
Himesh Patel
Eurylochus
Second-in-command, and the crew’s unruly conscience.
John Leguizamo
Eumaeus
The blind swineherd; the first loyal soul met on Ithaca’s shore.
Bill Irwin
Polyphemus
On-set soul of the Cyclops, son of Poseidon.

The mapmaker

Christopher Nolan

Writer · Director · Producer. With producing partner Emma Thomas and Syncopy, he carried Homer’s poem across six countries and onto the largest film format ever built.

Witness it