Matt Damon was the first cast member of Christopher Nolan’s odyssey film to be revealed, and he is also the first we see in costume.
Director Christopher Nolan (The Prestige, Oppenheimer) is filming Homer’s Odyssey and has cast Matt Damon as the legendary hero. We already knew that much. But Variety and a first picture of the adventure film, which shows Damon in a magnificent costume, whose metal could do with a little polish, now confirm that the legendary role of Odysseus went to him and not to co-star Tom Holland.
First image of Matt Damon as Christopher Nolan’s Odysseus:
However, the question remains whether Odysseus will be the central character in Nolan’s The Odyssey, or whether the focus will be on a different character (for example, Holland’s other main character).
Christopher Nolan’s epic adventure The Odyssey: Perhaps his most ambitious film project to date
The almost 3000-year-old saga from ancient Greece sounds more and more ambitious in the hands of Nolan. He is said to have already recreated the whole of Troy for his adventure film and is said to be planning to realize the giant cyclops Polyphem as a practical effect with an animatronic puppet.
The rest of the cast is also not to be sniffed at, with Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Elliot Page, Jon Bernthal, Lupita Nyong’o and many more in the extensive cast.
When is The Odyssey coming to the cinema?
Filming has just begun and will take place this year in Morocco, the United Kingdom and on the Italian island of Favignana. The film is scheduled to be released in Germany on July 16, 2026. Plenty of time, then, to do some homework and brush up on our knowledge of Odysseus’s wanderings, which have already inspired a whole series of swashbuckling films.
