The Odyssey (2026)
The Odyssey is a 2026 adventure movie directed by Christopher Nolan and Ludwig Göransson, with a running time of 2h 53m. It stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway.
Ten years of war are over. Getting home is the hard part.
Christopher Nolan takes Homer for his largest canvas so far, with Matt Damon as Odysseus, king of Ithaca, working his way back across a sea that keeps refusing him, and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, holding a household that has waited far too long for him. The poem supplies the set pieces without any need for invention: gods with grudges, monsters, islands where forgetting is easy, and a crew whose loyalty thins with every landfall.
Nolan wrote the screenplay himself and runs it just under three hours, with Ludwig Goransson scoring. The ensemble around Damon is unusually deep: Tom Holland as Odysseus's son Telemachus, Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Himesh Patel as Eurylochus and John Leguizamo as the swineherd Eumaeus, with Lupita Nyong'o and Zendaya also in the cast.
The draw is scale meeting a very old kind of hero. Odysseus wins by lying, stalling and thinking, not by swinging hardest, and he is the rare protagonist whose defining quality is that he wants to go home rather than conquer anything. Watching a director who shoots for the largest formats available take on the oldest adventure in the Western canon is the reason to book the biggest screen you can find.
Quick answers
What is The Odyssey about?
Ten years of war are over. Getting home is the hard part. Christopher Nolan takes Homer for his largest canvas so far, with Matt Damon as Odysseus, king of Ithaca, working his way back across a sea that keeps refusing him, and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, holding a household that has waited far too long for him. The poem supplies the set pieces without any need for invention: gods with grudges, monsters, islands where forgetting is easy, and a crew whose loyalty thins with every landfall. Nolan wrote the screenplay himself and runs it just under three hours, with Ludwig Goransson scoring. The ensemble around Damon is unusually deep: Tom Holland as Odysseus's son Telemachus, Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous, Charlize Theron as Calypso, Himesh Patel as Eurylochus and John Leguizamo as the swineherd Eumaeus, with Lupita Nyong'o and Zendaya also in the cast. The draw is scale meeting a very old kind of hero. Odysseus wins by lying, stalling and thinking, not by swinging hardest, and he is the rare protagonist whose defining quality is that he wants to go home rather than conquer anything. Watching a director who shoots for the largest formats available take on the oldest adventure in the Western canon is the reason to book the biggest screen you can find.
When was The Odyssey released?
The Odyssey was released on 15 July 2026.
How long is The Odyssey?
The Odyssey runs 2h 53m.
Who made The Odyssey?
The Odyssey was directed by Christopher Nolan and Ludwig Göransson.
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A few thoughts on The Odyssey
Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles is the natural page companion, working the same war from inside a friendship and reaching the grief the poem keeps at arm's length. Ithaka turns instead to the people who stayed behind on the island, which is half the story and rarely the half anyone films.
Players who would rather steer than watch have two routes: Assassin's Creed Odyssey hands over the Aegean and lets you sail it for a hundred hours, while Hades turns the same pantheon into a fast, funny roguelike where the gods will not stop interrupting. The Odyssey remains the sturdy older screen version, the whole voyage told as a television miniseries.
Ancient myths reimagined as modern hero's-journey epics
Nolan's Odyssey turns Homer's wanderer into blockbuster spectacle, and these are the films and one novel doing the same trick with other ancient legends. Percy Jackson, Hercules, Immortals, Conan the Barbarian, The Northman and The Green Knight each drag a myth into modern genre filmmaking, while The Song of Achilles gives the Trojan War itself the same treatment on the page.
Games where a lone hero fights gods and monsters across a vast quest
Odysseus outwits gods and slays monsters for ten years before he sees home again, and these games hand you the same fight. Assassin's Creed Odyssey drops you into the actual Peloponnesian War, Hades sends you climbing out of the Greek underworld, and God of War and The Witcher 3 chase their own gods and beasts across a long, hostile road.
Pulpy sword-and-sorcery throwbacks with monsters at every turn
The Odyssey earns its epic scale from monsters, sorcery and a hero who refuses to quit, the same pulpy formula these throwbacks run on. Conan the Destroyer, Red Sonja, Deathstalker, Hercules in the Haunted World and Erik the Viking all trade Nolan's polish for cheap thrills, but keep the same wandering warrior facing down beasts for glory.
Strange, punishing journeys that remake the traveler
Odysseus spends a decade being remade by storms, islands and monsters before Ithaca lets him back in. Valhalla Rising, Hawaii, Interstate 60, Strawberry Mansion, Mackenna's Gold and One Piece all send a traveler through equally strange, punishing terrain, whether Viking hell, a Pacific coastline, a surreal highway or an ocean of endless islands.