Christopher Nolan’s next epic film is an actual epic: The Odyssey. Universal Pictures on Monday announced that the Oscar-winning Oppenheimer director will helm an IMAX-shot adaptation of Homer’s poem and confirmed the release date: July 17, 2026. Described as a “mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX technology,” Nolan’s Odyssey “brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX film screens for the first time.”
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The film, which reunites Nolan with Matt Damon (Oppenheimer), Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises), and Robert Pattinson (Tenet), is also set to star Tom Holland (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Zendaya (Dune: Part Two), Lupita Nyong'o (Black Panther), and Charlize Theron (Fast X). Universal has slated The Odyssey to open one week after Disney’s live-action Moana (July 10) and one week before Sony-Marvel’s Spider-Man 4also starring Holland, on July 24.
Homer’s Odyssey tracks Odysseus and his travels across the Mediterranean Sea in an attempt to return home to Ithaca after the decade-long Trojan War. Odysseus angers Poseidon, and is then pursued “with wrath implacable.” The epic poem features such mythical characters as Telemachus, the son of Odysseus/Ulysses and Penelope; the goddess Athena; the one-eyed giant Cyclops Polyphemus, blinded by Odysseus; the lustrous enchantress Circe; the lustful goddess Calypso; and the vengeful sea god Poseidon.
Nolan’s followup to last summer’s $976 million-grossing blockbuster Oppenheimer — which earned the Interstellar and Dark Knight filmmaker his first Oscar win, Best Picture, and gold for Robert Downey Jr. — has been a closely guarded mystery.
“It hasn’t started shooting. To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t know anything about it,” Holland recently told The Dish about Nolan’s next film. “I’m super excited. Everything is very very hush hush. I met with [Nolan]. It was awesome. He kind of loosely pitched what it was. And I’m sure when he’s ready, he’ll announce what it is.”
In November, Nolan said he was ready to move on from the “very dark” and “nihilistic” subject matter of Oppenheimerwhich starred Cillian Murphy as the father of the atomic bomb and “the most important individual figure in history,” according to Nolan.
“Part of me wants to leave the story behind. I mean, you know, it’s a great privilege to be able to talk about a film that you’ve made that’s now going into the home and on 4k and Blu-ray and all the rest. It’s great to be able to sit here and talk to you about the success of the movie. That’s a huge privilege,” Nolan told Yahoo. “But the subject matter is very dark. It’s nihilistic. And, yeah, there’s part of me that’s quite keen to move on and maybe do something, you know, not quite as bleak.”
The Odyssey sails into theaters July 17, 2026.
