The Odyssey Trailer Just Made Christopher Nolan’s Best Movie Feel Inevitable
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey drops a thunderous first trailer that points to his best film yet, with Matt Damon as Odysseus, Tom Holland as Telemachus, and Anne Hathaway as Penelope. Universal sets sail in US theaters July 17, 2026.
Christopher Nolan tackling Homer was not on my 2026 bingo card, but here we are. A new trailer for The Odyssey just dropped, and it looks like Nolan swinging for the fences in a genre he hasn’t touched before.
The basics: date, studio, cast
Universal Pictures is releasing The Odyssey in United States theaters on July 17, 2026. It’s Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, with Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, and Tom Holland as Telemachus.
Why this could be Nolan’s best
Nolan likes to hop genres, and when he does, the results are usually excellent. He returns to sci-fi a lot, sure, but he also zigzags into new lanes and cleans up when he does. The Odyssey is a full-on fantasy adventure, which is new terrain for him, and the early footage makes it look massive in scope without giving away the big mythological money shots.
- Sci-fi runs: Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Tenet (2020) — different flavors, same big-brain energy.
- Superhero pivot: most people rank The Dark Knight as the top Batman film, but Batman Begins still has serious respect among superhero fans.
- War experiment: Dunkirk — a razor-wire tension machine that flat-out ruled.
- Biopic leap: Oppenheimer — won a stack of Oscars, including Best Picture.
What the trailer shows (and what it doesn’t)
The trailer sells scale — sweeping seas, sprawling sets, and a sense that Nolan’s building his biggest canvas yet. What it doesn’t show: the Cyclops, the Sirens, or most of the headline myth creatures. That’s either restraint or confidence (probably both), and it suggests he’s keeping some crowd-pleasers in the chamber.
My read
This is a lane change for Nolan, and that’s exactly why it’s exciting. When he jumps genres, he tends to deliver — and the trailer looks like a filmmaker who knows exactly how to handle a myth this big. We’ll see how it all plays when it hits theaters next summer on July 17, 2026, but if you’re a Nolan fan, this one should already be on the calendar.