Unmasking King Agamemnon: Is Christopher Nolan Reuniting With an Oppenheimer Star for The Odyssey?

Christopher Nolan dropped the first trailer for his The Odyssey, and it already has people squinting at frames like it’s the Zapruder film. It’s his thirteenth feature, and — film-nerd alert — the first movie ever shot entirely on IMAX’s biggest film format. The teaser itself is classic Nolan: a muscular, moody two minutes mostly riding Matt Damon’s gravelly voiceover and a lot of salt, sweat, and storm clouds. But the shot everyone’s frozen on is the one Nolan barely lingers on.

The blink-and-you-miss-it reveal

Early in the trailer, Odysseus drops to one knee in front of a hulking figure in a black, brutalist helmet. That isn’t just any armored buzzkill — that’s King Agamemnon. And if you clocked the posture and the eyes peeking through the visor, you probably realized the actor isn’t a maybe: that’s Benny Safdie under there.

Fans on X were loudly campaigning for Tom Hardy as Agamemnon. Then the trailer hit, Safdie trended, and the vibe flipped to "oh, that’s perfect." It helps that Safdie already popped in Nolan’s orbit: The Hollywood Reporter said back in January 2025 that he’d re-teamed with Nolan after Oppenheimer, where he played Edward Teller and somehow stood out in a movie stacked wall-to-wall with scene stealers.

Safdie, back in Nolan-land — this time in armor

Nolan clearly noticed. He’s brought Safdie back for The Odyssey in what looks like a more physically imposing lane. The helmet hides most of the face in the trailer, but the presence is there. Whether Agamemnon gets a lot of screen time is the question. In Homer, he doesn’t. In cinema, Nolan could go either way — minimal scenes, maximum impact is kind of his thing.

So who is Agamemnon to Odysseus, exactly?

Quick refresher: Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae, brother to Menelaus, and the top dog who commanded the Greek forces in the Trojan War. He’s a major player in The Iliad; in The Odyssey — which takes place after the war — he’s more of a cautionary echo. After coming home, Agamemnon gets murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover. Later, Odysseus meets Agamemnon’s spirit in the underworld, where the fallen king basically says: be careful on your return, betrayal can hit closer than a spear. It’s a sharp thematic mirror for Odysseus’s entire homecoming.

Translation for the movie: even if Safdie’s Agamemnon is only on screen briefly, his shadow could be one of the story’s big emotional anchors — loyalty, paranoia, trust, the whole "you can win the war and still lose everything" thing.

The essentials

• Title: The Odyssey
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Format flex: first feature shot start-to-finish on IMAX’s largest film format
• Cast: Matt Damon (Odysseus), Benny Safdie (Agamemnon), Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Jon Bernthal
• Release date: July 17, 2026
• Nolan feature count: 13

Bottom line

The trailer sells grit and scale, Damon looks locked-in as Odysseus, and the Safdie reveal is a fun little jolt. Between the myth, the cast, and Nolan shooting on the biggest canvas IMAX has, this one’s set up to be both a technical flex and a character piece with teeth — exactly where Nolan likes to live.