Matt Damon Calls Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey the Best Experience of His Career — One Beach Horse Left Him Speechless

Christopher Nolan is taking a swing at Homer next summer, and Matt Damon sounds genuinely gobsmacked by the whole thing. He is leading Nolan's epic The Odyssey as Odysseus, and based on what he told Empire, this shoot was a career high.

'I can say, without hyperbole, that it was the best experience of my career. I saw the horse on the beach and I was just like, 'Fuck.' It was just so cool.'

Damon finally in the driver seat

This is Damon and Nolan's third time working together after Interstellar and Oppenheimer. The twist this time: Damon is actually the guy at the center of it, playing the title role of Odysseus. Big myth, bigger toys.

The on-set vibe: massive scale, figure-it-out energy

Damon says that even with a production this huge, Nolan kept things loose when it helped. He remembers asking Nolan how they were going to pull off a looming Trojan horse sequence that was scheduled for the following week. Nolan's answer, according to Damon: 'I don't know. We will just get in there and figure it out.' That sounds appropriately chaotic, but it sits on top of Nolan's usual obsession with doing as much as humanly possible for real.

Think about it this way: this is the filmmaker who literally drove a Boeing 737 into a building for Tenet. So when The Odyssey throws Odysseus at Sirens or Cyclopes, the production is not hiding behind green screens. Damon says if the scene calls for him to be lashed to a mast, he is actually up there dealing with it; if the script says run for your life, he is dusting the set with his footprints. The monsters and myths may be fantastical, but the physicality is very much in-camera.

Who is in this thing, and when do we see it?

• Matt Damon as Odysseus
• Tom Holland
• Anne Hathaway
• Jon Bernthal
• Charlize Theron
• Robert Pattinson
• ...and more to be announced

The Odyssey opens in theaters on July 17, 2026. Given the scale Damon is hinting at (that Trojan horse on a beach image is doing a lot of heavy lifting), this sounds like classic Nolan: fearless, practical, and determined to make the impossible look tactile.