Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to Oppenheimer will be an adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, it has been revealed.
Hollywood studio Universal, which is backing the project, posted on social media on Monday that: “Christopher Nolan’s next film The Odyssey is a mythic action epic shot across the world” and that “Homer’s foundational saga” will be shot “using brand new Imax film technology”. The studio said it plans to release the film in July 2026.
News that Nolan was working on a new project – following the seven-Oscars-winning Oppenheimer – first emerged in October, when Spider-Man’s Tom Holland was revealed to be in talks to star alongside Matt Damon. Nolan has chosen to stick with Oppenheimer producers Universal, after ending his previous relationship with the studio Warner Bros when it temporarily abandoned exclusive theatrical distribution during the Covid pandemic.
It later emerged that Anne Hathaway and Zendaya have also joined the cast. While making the announcement, Hathaway expressed her gratitude to Nolan for giving her a role in his sci-fi epic Interstellar, after “how toxic my identity had become online … [he did] not care about that and gave me one of the most beautiful roles I’ve had in one of the best films that I’ve been a part of.”
Nolan has long been enthusiastic about the giant-scale Imax format, and previously employed it in films including The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar and Dunkirk.
The Odyssey, composed in the 8th or 7th century BC and attributed to Homer, has been only rarely adapted for the screen, with perhaps the most prominent example being the 1954 Italian film Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas and Silvana Mangano. Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche play the leads in The Return, adapted from The Odyssey’s final section, which was released in the US in December. The 1995 film Ulysses’ Gaze, directed by Greek auteur Theo Angelopoulos and starring Harvey Keitel, uses motifs from Homer in its study of a film-maker returning to his Greek homeland, while O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen brothers’ 2000 comedy, also borrows from the epic poem.