’You want to scare yourself’: Christopher Nolan on making ‘The Odyssey’

Celebrated director embarks on epic undertaking for his biggest movie yet

Published Jul 11, 2026  •  Last updated 18 minutes ago  •  8 minute read

Matt Damon is Odysseus in 'The Odyssey,' written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon /Universal Pictures

NEW YORK CITY — More than 20 years ago, Christopher Nolan was hired to direct Brad Pitt’s swords-and-sandals epic Troy. Loosely adapted from Homer’s Iliad, the film depicted the decade-long Trojan War and featured legendary figures from Greek mythology such as Achilles, Odysseus, Agamemnon and more.

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“That didn’t work out,” Nolan, 55, says in an interview with Postmedia in a downtown Manhattan hotel, “but I went off to Batman instead, so it all worked out fine.”

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Despite the project falling through, the award-winning filmmaker had long thought he wouldn’t mind taking a stab at another one of Homer’s Greek epics — The Odyssey.

After directing Oppenheimer, his 2023 biopic on Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb, Nolan found himself returning to the idea of adapting Homer’s monumental poem for the big screen.

With The Odyssey, in theatres this week, Nolan gets a chance to fulfil his dream of tackling one of literature’s greatest fables.

Matt Damon plays the heroic Odysseus who, after fighting in the 10-year long Trojan War, embarks on a perilous journey back to his wife Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway, and son Telemachus (Tom Holland).

The sprawling ensemble also includes Zendaya (Athena), Lupita Nyong’o (in the duel roles of Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra), John Leguizamo (Odysseus’ servant Eumaeus), Robert Pattinson (Antinous), Charlize Theron (Calypso), Elliot Page (Sinon), Benny Safdie (Agamemnon), Jon Bernthal (Menelaus), Himesh Patel (Eurylochus), and Samantha Morton (Circe).

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‘This was a massive creative challenge’

The casting has drawn criticism from some parts of the Internet, but when seats went on sale a year ago, opening-weekend tickets sold out for screens that will show the movie in IMAX 70mm film — the filmmaker’s preferred format.

The challenge that comes from adapting such a revered text is part of making movies. After all, Nolan has directed a trilogy of Batman movies. So, he knows how to overcome fickle fanbases.

“But this was a massive creative challenge,” Nolan says of writing, directing and producing (alongside his wife Emma Thomas) The Odyssey, which spanned six months and took place in six countries.

To help realize his vision, IMAX designed an all-new camera that allowed Nolan and his longtime cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, to shoot The Odyssey entirely in the large-screen format.

Director Christopher Nolan with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema on set of ‘The Odyssey.’ Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon /Universal Pictures

It is all in service of his continuing bid to give audiences something different every time he puts a film in theatres.

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“I always want to feel like I can give them an experience they haven’t had before,” says Nolan, who has also written and directed Tenet, Dunkirk, Interstellar and Inception.

Below, the two-time Oscar winner speaks about how The Odyssey challenged him in new ways, casting Damon and names a hidden gem from his filmography he hopes movie fans rediscover during a TIFF retrospective screening in Toronto this summer.

I don’t know how your process works. Do you have a bunch of ideas and one takes over? How did The Odyssey surface?

“I have things that I noodle and work on over the years. But I really do one thing at a time. When I’m making a film, I’m just thinking about that and not what’s next. Then you finish the film and it goes out to the world and I’ll look at the things I’d been thinking about over the years. In the case of The Odyssey, I had been briefly attached to direct Troy, the great David Benioff script, 20-something years ago … But I had a couple important images that stuck with me, particularly how I wanted to treat the Trojan Horse. The idea of it being half-buried in the sand, about to be destroyed by the waves. I also had this image of a soldier decapitating a statue with a sword. These things really stuck with me in a way that made me feel I wanted to address this world in some way.

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A scene from ‘The Odyssey,’ written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon /Universal Pictures

“But I’m always looking for something new you can bring or some gap in the movie culture, and nobody had really taken on Greek mythology in movies. There’s a whole world there. Maybe it was for technical reasons. In the great day of classical epics in Hollywood, there wasn’t the special effects technology, the visual effects technology to realize fantasy, so they tended to stick to Roman times or, in the case of Troy, the Iliad, as opposed to The Odyssey, which obviously you have to embrace a lot of fantastical elements.

“I felt like, ‘OK, I know how to do that in today’s world. I know how to give people a reason to believe in these things.’ That was the main part of my process. Feeling like I can do something that I haven’t seen before.”

Could you have made this movie 10 years ago?

“No I couldn’t … I’ve done films with intense logistics — where you’re travelling to different countries. I’ve done films with intense stunt work … I’ve done films with a lot of marine work … The Odyssey brings a lot of different things together. You’re bringing battle scenes and boats and visual effects all together … So the mantra on the film for all heads of department was, ‘Give (moviegoers) a reason to believe.’ The audience wants to go on this journey with you. So you have to put in the work to give people a reason to believe in these incredible things.

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Matt Damon is Odysseus and Zendaya is Athena in ‘The Odyssey.’ Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon /Universal Pictures

“That was an extraordinary creative challenge for everyone involved. How are we going to have (goddess of magic) Circe turn a bunch of soldiers into pigs? How do we approach the fantastical elements? How do we put (one-eyed giant) Cyclops in a movie? How do we bring people into the cave with Cyclops and make that feel like something they can believe in? My feeling was that if you can give (the audience) that experience, that would be something special. Something people haven’t had before.”

It’s incredible to watch Matt Damon’s transformation into this character. He’s someone audiences have grown up watching. Why did you settle on him?

“I don’t think about actors while I’m writing. I try and really write from inside the characters and try and really discover the characters on the page. If you write with an actor in mind, you’re going to limit the character by what you’ve seen them do before. You’re going to be distracted. After having done that, how do you cast Odysseus?

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“The thing about Odysseus is, Odysseus is a complicated character who works incredibly well as a supporting character in The Iliad. If you (compare it to) Star Wars, he’s more like Han Solo than Luke Skywalker. He’s a really good supporting character because he’s wily and not always trustworthy and he’s smart and clever. In The Odyssey, he’s centre stage. So you need someone who has a relationship with the audience, a trust.

Matt Damon is Odysseus in ‘The Odyssey.’ Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon /Universal Pictures

“The thing with Matt is he’s an incredible actor technically and artistically, but he’s also a movie star who has the charisma to take the audience with him and take them into a character’s dilemma. He doesn’t lose the audience. That wonderful connection with the audience is so precious and so necessary for something like The Odyssey because you’re going to go on this journey.

“Matt is also a incredible collaborator. The other thing about Matt is … he has these roles where he’s a wonderful, accessible everyman. Like someone you could imagine having a beer with. Then he’s Jason Bourne. The thing about Odysseus is, he’s both those things. And you have to believe in both those sides of him and invest in that. I don’t know of any other actor who could bring that to the table.”

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Ever since your breakthrough with Memento in 2000, we’ve never seen you repeat yourself as a filmmaker. How important has risk been to your career?

“I think, for me, the bigger risk would be repeating yourself and doing something you already knew how to do … Creatively, I’m looking to challenge the people I’m working with and challenge myself to do something we haven’t done before. We have a lot of skills, we have a lot of techniques. We got a lot of confidence from things we’ve done in the past. But you want to scare yourself a little bit. You want to go a bit further creatively and artistically. You want to put people in a less comfortable place. And that, to me, is less of a risk than resting on your laurels and showing an audience something they may have already seen before. That, to me, is a scarier proposition. I’m very motivated and driven by the idea of putting on a show for the audience that they haven’t seen before.”

The Odyssey is the first feature-length movie in history to be filmed entirely on IMAX. What was that like?

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“It was incredible. I’ve wanted to do it since I was a teenager. Filmmakers like Toni Myers and Greg MacGillivray were doing unbelievable work. They were taking these cameras on airplanes, into space, up Mt. Everest. So I wondered why couldn’t we take it into a studio? The big barrier was always sound. We started with The Dark Knight, doing action sequences that way and built on that through my career. But we were never able to get the intimate moments.

Jimmy Gonzales as Cepheus, Matt Damon as Odysseus and Himesh Patel as Eurylochus in ‘The Odyssey.’ Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon /Universal Pictures

“So, for this film, I challenged IMAX to build us new cameras so that we could shoot the whole thing on IMAX. We went into it with a backup plan, carrying other types of cameras we could use if we couldn’t do this. But about halfway through the shoot, Hoyte and I were filming one of the most intimate scenes between Matt and Anne, and it had gone well. It really worked. We suddenly looked at one another and said, ‘OK, we can do this. We can do the whole film this way.’

“From that moment on, everyone just rose to the challenge and just embraced it. But for me, it’s the fulfilment of a long-held dream to do that.”

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The Toronto International Film Festival is hosting a retrospective of your work over the summer. If you could select one film fans of your movies should check out on the big screen, which would you suggest they watch?

“I’ll be very specific. The Prestige is 20 years old this year. We are going to re-release that on the big screen at the beginning of next year. We couldn’t do it this year, it’s too crowded, but Disney and Warners are going to put it out next January.

Director Christopher Nolan and actor Christian Bale during filming of ‘The Prestige.’ Photo by Touchstone Pictures

“That is a film that I’m very, very excited to get back on the big screen and have people look at it in that way. But all my films are made for the big screen. Everything I’ve ever done is with that theatrical experience in mind, so it’s a thrill to think that any of these would be seen on that big screen by that audience. That’s exciting.”

The Odyssey opens in theatres July 17.

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