Where Was The Odyssey Filmed? Every Epic Location Revealed So Far

Christopher Nolan is taking Homer on a world tour. His The Odyssey isn't just big, it's everywhere — shooting on real coastlines, castles, deserts, and soundstages across multiple countries, and yes, IMAX 70mm screenings are already sold out. Matt Damon plays Odysseus, with Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong'o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, and Jon Bernthal along for the ride. The movie hits the U.S. on July 17, 2026, and the expectation level is somewhere between 'event' and 'move your vacation.'

Where Nolan's actually filming

Nolan is mixing lived-in, historic locations with controlled studio builds, trying to make the Mediterranean journey feel tangible without losing technical precision. Here's the travel log so far:

• Greece: Messinia (Peloponnese), Pylos, Methoni Castle, Acrocorinth, Nestor's Cave, Voidokilia Beach
• Italy: Favignana (Sicily), Aeolian Islands
• Morocco: Royal Theatre (Marrakech), Ait Ben Haddou, Essaouira, Dakhla (White Dune)
• United Kingdom: Culbin Forest, Findlater Castle, Sunnyside Beach
• Iceland: Markarfljot River, Hjorleifshofdi Beach, Sydra Skogarnes
• United States: Sony Pictures Studios (Stages 9 and 27), Universal Studios (Stage 12 and Falls Lake)

Why these spots matter

A lot of this map literally echoes Homer's route. Favignana in Sicily — nicknamed 'goat island' — sits in the Egadi archipelago and ties to the part of the journey when Odysseus and his crew stop to rest, eat, and reload supplies. Nolan's also been out on the open ocean, chasing the exact feeling of being tiny against shifting water and weather. He's talked about how the sea swung between generous and punishing from day to day, which is kind of the point of this story.

"We really wanted to capture how hard those journeys would have been for people. And the leap of faith that was being made in an unmapped, uncharted world... By embracing the physicality of the real world in the making of the film, you do inform the telling of the story in interesting ways. Because you're confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you."

The scale (and the celluloid) are wild

They've already rolled cameras for 91 days and burned through more than 2 million feet of film. Quick napkin math: 65mm stock runs about $1.50 per foot, so the film stock alone is roughly a $3 million line item — and they're not done.

The IMAX experiment

Here's the nerdy bit: The Odyssey is the first blockbuster shot entirely with full IMAX film cameras. That only happened because Nolan pushed IMAX to rework the famously bulky rigs so they're quieter and lighter. The payoff is obvious — you can drag those cameras into real environments (beaches, caves, wind, spray) without fighting the gear at every turn.

Big picture

Between the cast, the globe-hopping locations, and the all-IMAX gamble, this is Nolan swinging for the fences. If you're wondering whether the hype is already baked in — those IMAX 70mm slots filling up this far out kind of answers that. July 17, 2026 is circled.