Empire Magazine sat down with Christopher Nolan and Matt Damon to discuss The Odyssey, which included a 6-minute sneak peak at new footage.
We managed to get our hands on Empire Magazine’s latest entry, which contained more details about Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of The Odyssey that haven’t been previously released online.
Many interesting details were shared — among them was Christopher Nolan personally showing the Empire interviewers 6 minutes of new footage from the film, which sounded like a potential trailer or prologue. A big IMAX film is coming up with James Cameron’s Avatar 3, and Nolan is long known for putting out extended footage from his films in front of blockbusters. It would not be surprising if it gets tied to that release, but that’s unconfirmed at this time.
Here’s the full footage, as described by Empire:
At Syncopy, Nolan leads Empire to his private screening room and recommends the optimal seat. There, standing behind us and operating the big screen via iPad, he activates six minutes of The Odyssey.
It begins with a question: “You hear the story of the horse?” Cue a thundering action set-piece, flashing us back to the walls of Troy. The visuals are visceral, the audio an adrenaline-rush. Odysseus’ hulking ruse is dragged via ropes and straining sinews up a beach towards the city. Then, at night-time, his desperate battle to open the gates of Troy and finally end that damn war. It’s extraordinary stuff, a mini rollercoaster ride, briskly knocking out one of history’s most iconic military triumphs as an hors d’oeuvre before the entrée. And a mission statement: if you thought Christopher Nolan’s films were colossal before, just you wait.
Finally, setting it well and truly apart from Troy, the footage ends with a quick single shot of a fearsome Cyclops.
The Odyssey is a huge story and some parts will have to be left out, even if the film ends up well over 3 hours, but one thing we now know that will appear is the underworld Hades. Matt Damon talks about filming it Iceland:
“We’re shooting Hades, and it’s got black sand and I’m sure it’s gonna look really cool. But we had to disembark from the boat, and the rain was just sideways. I mean, it was just pissing down. And we’re holding these lanterns and Himesh [Patel, who plays one of Odysseus’ shipmates] turns to me and goes, ‘Well, at least it can’t get any worse.’ And just then, somebody shows up with two sheep. We just started laughing it was so ridiculous.”
Christopher Nolan further talked about approaching the mythical aspects of the film:
“One of the things I needed to crack was how to approach mythological elements in a sort of real-world way. The big breakthrough creatively in thinking about the gods was that everything that is now explained by science was once supernatural. Lightning, thunder, earthquakes, volcanoes… people are literally seeing gods everywhere; not even the evidence of gods, they’re seeing the actions of gods. I don’t want to say too much about it beyond indicating that yes, the evidence of the supernatural is all around these people. It’s very much part of their lives. And I think it’s quite a lot of fun to tap into that.”
Nolan also praised Matt Damon as being ‘dialed’ in with filming this project:
“Even knowing what a great actor Matt is, having done a couple of movies with him, there are moments that have actually shocked me in his performance. He’s so dialled into this character, and the meaning of it and themes behind it and emotions underneath it. Matt went to the mat with this one.”
The movie is the first project ever shot completely with IMAX film cameras. They shot over 2M feet of film and Nolan says he’s still waiting for a lot of experiments to come back.
The Odyssey is set to release in theaters July 17, 2026. Footage from filming of the siege of Troy sequence leaked several months back. Make sure to check out our film section for future updates.
