Universal Pictures has released the official new trailer for The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of Homer’s legendary epic poem — and yes, this looks every bit as enormous as that sentence suggests.
The film follows Odysseus, the Greek king and warrior attempting to return home after the Trojan War. What should be a journey back to Ithaca becomes a brutal, mythic struggle across seas, monsters, gods and human temptation. It is one of the oldest adventure stories in Western literature, but in Nolan’s hands, The Odyssey appears to be less of a dusty classical retelling and more of a full-scale cinematic survival epic.
Matt Damon leads the film as Odysseus, with Tom Holland as Telemachus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope. The cast also includes Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o and several other major names, giving the film the kind of ensemble weight expected from a Nolan production.
The new trailer leans heavily into scale: ships, storms, ancient warfare, divine danger and the long emotional pull of a man trying to get back to the people he left behind. That balance is what makes The Odyssey such powerful material for a filmmaker like Nolan. It is not only a story about spectacle, but also about time, memory, loyalty and the cost of survival — themes that sit very comfortably inside his body of work.
Another major selling point is the format. Universal has promoted The Odyssey as being shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, which makes the theatrical experience a huge part of the pitch. This is clearly not being positioned as a casual streaming-era mythological adventure. It is being sold as a massive big-screen movie designed for scale, sound and immersion.
For audiences who love Nolan’s more ambitious side, The Odyssey could become one of 2026’s defining releases. The trailer suggests a film that wants to make ancient myth feel immediate again — not by modernising it too aggressively, but by treating the journey itself as something dangerous, physical and overwhelming.
The Odyssey opens in theaters on July 17, 2026.
Video source: Universal Pictures
