Next summer, three years after the release of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan will make his cinematic return by delivering The Odyssey to the 2026 movies schedule. This will mark his third collaboration with Matt Damon, having previously worked with him on the J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic and Interstellar. Damon is playing Odysseus in this epic action fantasy movie, and his latest comments about the filming experience has me even more pumped for the next Nolan feature.
Matt Damon is certainly no stranger to blockbuster productions, from Saving Private Ryan and the Ocean’s movies, to The Martian and his outings as Jason Bourne. So it says a lot that he was impressed by what’s been done for The Odyssey, describing it to Empire as “exactly what you want from a summer movie.” The actor explained that this film adaptation of Homer’s epic succeeds in being “the most massively entertaining film” and feeing “mythic,” then continued:
I can say, without hyperbole, that it was the best experience of my career. I saw the horse on the beach and I was just like, ‘Fuck.’ It was just so cool… We were shooting that [Trojan horse] stuff next week, so I go, ‘How are you going to do it?’ And [Nolan] goes, ‘I don’t know. We’ll just get in there and figure it out.’
The Odyssey was announced as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer follow-up, and second movie set up at Universal Pictures, last December. However, it was known months beforehand that Matt Damon would be re-teaming with Nolan again, with his castmates on the then-mystery project including Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. The Odyssey wrapped filming in August, and three months later, Damon is still impressed by what he experienced and saw during principal photography, particularly with the Trojan Horse horse that was constructed.
Naturally Christopher Nolan’s vision for The Odyssey will faithfully adapt Odysseus’ 10-year journey to return home to his wife and son after fighting in the Trojan War for the same amount of time. He’ll run into all sorts of fantastical threats along the way, and Matt Damon further praised Nolan for how detailed he got in The Odyssey script laying out what awaits the King of Ithaca:
If you’re going to have an existential crisis as you pass the Sirens and you’re lashed to a mast, it’s there. If it says you’re running for your life from a Cyclops, you’re going to run for your life. Chris doesn’t hide the ball.
With an alleged budget of $250 million, The Odyssey is the most expensive movie Christopher Nolan has ever made, and he shared in a separate Empire interview that he shot over two million feet of film across 90 days. With numbers like that, I’d expect nothing less than for The Odyssey to be a cinematic spectacle of epic proportions, and I’m even more eager to see it on the big screen. Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page and Mia Goth are among the many other actors who will be present in this adaptation.
Catch The Odyssey in theaters starting on July 17, 2026. Unfortunately, Oppenheimer is not currently streaming, but you can now watch Tenet, the movie Christopher Nolan helmed before that, with a Netflix subscription.