\u201cThis is going to be really hard\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\nThe journey would require a deep dive into Greek mythology, Bronze Age scholarship and many translations, a monthslong scouting expedition and a 91-day shoot spanning six months and six countries during which the cast and crew endured all manner of challenging weather, landscapes and the treachery of the open seas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Odyssey\u201d was an epic undertaking \u2014 the hardest film anyone involved had ever made. Matt Damon, who stars as Odysseus, said that Nolan warned him as much before they started filming.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe told me it was going to be hard, which I kind of, I blew off at first. I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, yeah, it\u2019s going to hard. And he said \u2018no, no, this is going to be really hard,\u2019\u201d Damon said. \u201cHe did not disappoint.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was by design.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s \u2018The Odyssey,\u2019\u201d Nolan said. \u201cThis should be a difficult film to make, and it was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike Odysseus\u2019s extended journey home, the production was also efficient: They finished nine days early.
\nMaking \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 relatable, and rejecting Hollywood tropes<\/p>\n
When Hollywood movies take on the ancient world, they often fall back on familiar tropes \u2014 using accents, elevated language, 19th century orchestral scores and neoclassical touchstones to convey antiquity. Nolan wanted to do something different and found inspiration in the text of the poem, in which he observed an earthy sensibility that stood in contrast to the grandeur of the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to question people\u2019s assumptions about how things should be portrayed in movies and what those are based on,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cThere\u2019s a challenge to that and a risk to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
That meant making some bold choices, including colloquial language, American accents, and blending elements from various stories, including \u201cThe Iliad,\u201d \u201cThe Aeneid\u201d and \u201cAgamemnon,\u201d to give the audience more clarity. His Trojan Horse, which he\u2019s been thinking about since he was briefly attached to direct \u201cTroy\u201d over 20 years ago, does not have wheels.<\/p>\n
For the score, he challenged composer Ludwig G\u00f6ransson to use bronze gongs, aulos and the lyre to create a new kind of soundscape, and to come up with a four-note theme where the last would be the pluck of a bow.<\/p>\n
And paramount to this story of homecoming and coming-of-age, his characters needed to be relatable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe movie has so much scale,\u201d said Tom Holland, who plays Odysseus\u2019s son Telemachus. \u201cThere are times where it feels like you\u2019re on this kind of action-adventure roller coaster, but he doesn\u2019t sacrifice any of the heart and the intimacy between our characters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the large ensemble cast are many famous names: Anne Hathaway is Odysseus\u2019s wife Penelope, Zendaya is the goddess Athena, Charlize Theron is the nymph Calypso and Lupita Nyong\u2019o is Helen, and her twin sister.<\/p>\n
Robert Pattinson, Nolan said, is \u201cunleashing his inner Alan Rickman\u201d as the villainous suitor Antinous.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s continually saying to Telemachus, \u2018I\u2019m going to be your stepdad, I\u2019ll be your daddy,\u2019\u201d Nolan said. \u201cIt was such a fascinatingly creepy and amusing basis for villainy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading the charge was Damon, an actor Nolan knew he liked working with after \u201cInterstellar\u201d and \u201cOppenheimer. \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need somebody who will take the audience on this journey,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cWith Matt, he\u2019s able to combine that iconic sort of superhero thing with a very, very emotionally accessible and comprehensible person.\u201d
\nFinding the real; Grounding the fantastical<\/strong><\/p>\nThe film begins with the words \u201ca time of apparent magic,\u201d a promise of what\u2019s to come in this mythical world of gods, monsters, superstitions and natural phenomena. The pursuit of the real led them all over the world. Troy was constructed in Morocco, the cave of the Cyclops was found in foothills of Greece, Iceland\u2019s black sands, shot in the midnight sun, are used for Hades and the island of Favignana, near Sicily, played Ithaca, where much of the cast and crew hiked 45-minutes every day before work to reach a 15th-century castle, 1,030 feet (313.9 meters) above sea level.<\/p>\n
On the seas, they used a real ship, the Draken, a reconstruction of a 1,000-year-old Viking ship that production modified slightly to make it look more of the Mycenaean era. The actors learned to row. The ship\u2019s crew played extras.<\/p>\n
But Nolan\u2019s love of in-camera effects doesn\u2019t mean he rejects other kinds. \u201cTenet,\u201d \u201cInterstellar\u201d and \u201cInception\u201d all won Oscars for visual effects, after all. And in \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d there are things that can\u2019t be found in the natural world, from the six-headed Scylla to the Cyclops, the design of which was inspired by the Francisco Goya painting \u201cSaturn Devouring His Son.\u201d Bill Irwin, who brought the robots to life in \u201cInterstellar,\u201d delivered the performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew we were going to need every trick in the book, from animatronics to puppetry to computer graphics,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cBut I knew I needed a performer \u2026 He doesn\u2019t treat the Cyclops as just a monster.\u201d<\/p>\n
What it adds up to is something that, miraculously for a 3,000-year-old tale, feels fresh.<\/p>\n
\u201cChris has created something that\u2019s totally new,\u201d said Hathaway. \u201cThat\u2019s a remarkable achievement.\u201d
\nOdyssey-fever<\/strong><\/p>\nNolan productions always inspire a certain amount of hysteria, but excitement for \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d reached a fever pitch. Initial screenings for the 70 mm IMAX showings \u2014 his favorite format \u2014 sold out in under an hour a year in advance. When all showtimes went on sale last month, ticketing sites crashed. High profile locations like the AMC Lincoln Square in New York and AMC CityWalk in Los Angeles are virtually sold out for weeks, and scalpers on eBay are attempting to sell tickets for more than $500. But the 70 mm IMAX screens account for only about 32 theaters out of thousands in North America \u2014 there are other ways to see the film, including 70 mm, digital IMAX and other large format presentations.<\/p>\n
For Nolan, the audience is the north star; Entertaining is a responsibility he takes seriously. In fact, he said, a film isn\u2019t really done until it reaches the audience: They\u2019re the ones who finish the piece.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe audience tells you what it is,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cAnd that means that for us, this is an exciting moment, but a very frightening moment, because it\u2019s real. There\u2019s nothing to hide behind. We made this film for a theatrical audience, and it goes out in the world as that. And we\u2019ll see what the world makes of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Christopher Nolan has never been afraid to dream a little bigger. It\u2019s almost a calling. With every film, he\u2019s pushed himself and the medium further \u2014 playing with form, storytelling, visuals and audience expectations to create lasting cinematic spectacles. A student of Hollywood history, the Oscar-winner is always looking to fill … Continue reading Behind Christopher Nolan\u2019s 6-country epic undertaking to bring \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 to the big screen<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":1522902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1451],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1522892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abc-entertainment-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-07-11 12:58:31","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1522892"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1522906,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522892\/revisions\/1522906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1522902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1522892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1522892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1522892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2026\/07\/mattdamon-1.webp\")
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Christopher Nolan has never been afraid to dream a little bigger. It\u2019s almost a calling. With every film, he\u2019s pushed himself and the medium further \u2014 playing with form, storytelling, visuals and audience expectations to create lasting cinematic spectacles. A student of Hollywood history, the Oscar-winner is always looking to fill gaps in cinematic culture and show audiences something they haven\u2019t seen before: \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d he realized, was a massive one.<\/p>\n