Why Christopher Nolan’s New Odyssey Update Has Zendaya Fans Worried About Her Role
A new poster for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey hints Zendaya’s role may be limited, with her receiving a with credit near the end of the cast list — a detail already sparking fan debate over her screen time.
Christopher Nolan is making The Odyssey, Zendaya is in it, and a new poster just kicked up a very specific kind of fan panic: the billing says 'with Zendaya.' Cue the debate over whether she is in this thing for five minutes or actually a major player.
About that 'with Zendaya' on the poster
The poster in question lines up the starry cast and tucks Zendaya toward the end with the classic 'with' tag. In Hollywood billing language, that usually signals a smaller-but-meaningful part. Fans clocked it immediately and split into two camps: the ones bracing for a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance, and the ones pointing out that The Odyssey is episodic by design, so outside of Matt Damon as Odysseus (and probably Tom Holland as Telemachus), everyone is likely coming in and out with limited screen time.
There were also plenty of requests for Nolan to give Zendaya more to do than, well, Dune Part One did. On the flip side, some fans noted 'small' does not always mean 'unimportant' and argued that a 'with' credit can still carry serious weight in a story like this.
So who is Zendaya playing?
Empire Magazine revealed Zendaya is playing Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war who champions Odysseus in Homer’s poem. If Nolan sticks close to the text, Athena is a constant presence in the story even when she is not physically on the page, steering events, petitioning Zeus, and showing up in disguise to nudge mortals in the right direction. Translation: if the movie honors that approach, she could matter a lot even without dominating the runtime.
That last part matters, because early chatter in 2024 (after Deadline confirmed her casting, following Damon and Holland) suggested her role might be 'little more than a cameo.' The InSneider even floated the idea that she could be on screen only for a few minutes. The Athena reveal complicates those expectations in a good way.
Nolan on how the gods fit his approach
One of the things I needed to crack was how to approach mythological elements in a sort of real-world way. The big breakthrough creatively in thinking about the gods was that everything that is now explained by science was once supernatural.
I don't want to say too much about it beyond indicating that yes, the evidence of the supernatural is all around these people. It's very much a part of their lives.
In other words, expect the divine to be baked into the world rather than blasted in with lightning bolts. Whether that means Zendaya plays Athena in multiple guises or a single human form, the character clearly sits near the movie’s center of gravity.
For anyone still wondering: earlier speculation that she might be Calypso (the nymph who keeps Odysseus on her island for years) now looks unlikely, and Calypso's role in the poem is much more contained anyway.
Who is playing who
Nolan is back at Universal after Oppenheimer's awards run, and he has stacked the cast. Filming took place in Morocco and Sicily, and Empire recently connected several names to roles. Others remain under wraps. Here is what has been revealed so far:
- Matt Damon - Odysseus
- Tom Holland - Telemachus
- Zendaya - Athena
- Anne Hathaway - Penelope
- Robert Pattinson - Antinous
- Benny Safdie - Agamemnon
- Jon Bernthal - Menelaus
- Charlize Theron - Circe
- John Leguizamo - Eumaeus
- Mia Goth - Melantho
The ensemble also includes Lupita Nyong'o, Elliot Page, Samantha Morton, Himesh Patel, Bill Irwin, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, and Ryan Hurst, with roles for Nyong'o, Page, Morton, Hurst, and Irwin still being kept quiet.
Yes, IMAX tickets went on sale a year early
IMAX announced on X on July 17, 2025 that tickets were on sale for the first IMAX 70mm screenings, a full year before release. According to THR, those sold out in about an hour and pulled in roughly $1.5 million in sales. People are clearly expecting another event after Oppenheimer.
The bottom line on Zendaya's screen time
The poster's 'with' billing suggests a limited appearance. The role being Athena suggests a lot of narrative importance. Given The Odyssey’s structure, most characters outside Odysseus (and to a lesser extent Telemachus) will likely pop in for key chapters and exit. That tracks with the poem and with Nolan's comments about how the gods will permeate the world rather than dominate it.
We will find out exactly how much Zendaya we get when The Odyssey hits U.S. theaters on July 17, 2026.