Christopher Nolan's next movie is an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey: 'A mythic action epic'

Now, voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find an advance ticket for a theater near you.

Director Christopher Nolan's next movie has officially been revealed as The Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek poem about Odysseus' long journey home after the Trojan War.

Universal Pictures announced the news Monday on social media, hyping the film as "a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology." It's set to hit theaters July 17, 2026.

The Odyssey will mark Nolan's follow-up to Oppenheimer, his biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, which won seven Oscars (including Best Picture) and grossed nearly $1 billion at the worldwide box office. As with Oppenheimer, it appears Nolan is once again assembling a star-studded cast, with Matt Damon, Zendaya, Tom Holland, and Anne Hathaway set to star in The Odyssey.

Given Nolan's track record of a critical and commercial success, speculation about his next move has been rampant. Back in October, a Variety report detailing Warner Bros.' unsuccessful attempts to lure Nolan back to the studio after he defected to Universal for Oppenheimer listed all the rumored projects that wouldn't materialize as his 13th feature.

It wouldn't be a film adaptation of the 1960s British mystery series The Prisoner, which Nolan apparently considered developing in the 2000s. It wouldn't be a James Bond film, a rumor he categorically denied in 2023. It might be sci-fi, it might be action/espionage, a la Blue Thunder, the 1983 experimental police helicopter thriller that some have theorized Nolan might be interested in developing anew.

So, certainty at last. The Odyssey is one of the oldest recorded stories in existence, dating back to the 7th or 8th century BCE. Homer's epic poem in 24 books follows the King of Ithaca around the Mediterranean as he attempts to return home to his wife, Penelope, and son, Telemachus, after a 10-year campaign in Troy.

Being a nearly 3,000-year-old story, The Odyssey has been adapted, remixed, and reinterpreted countless times. In terms of film, there have been straight retellings, like Mario Camerini's Ulysses, starring Kirk Douglas and Silvana Mangano, and 1997's The Odyssey, starring Isabella Rossellini, Armand Assante, and Bernadette Peters. Then there are the fabulist reimaginings, like the Coen Brothers classic O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Theo Angelopoulos's Ulysses' Gaze, starring Harvey Keitel.

Based on what scant information we have so far, it sounds like Nolan's Odyssey may fall in the first camp — but only time will tell what the filmmaker does with this most classic of classics.