Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his perilous journey home to Ithaca after the end of the Trojan War.

Adapting Homer's Illiad, director Diane Kruger as Helen, Rose Byrne as Briseis, and Peter O'Toole as Priam, King of Troy.

My favorite, however, was Odysseus (Sean Bean). The King of Ithica, Odysseus, was one of the few Achilles respected and who could speak truth to the demigod's power.

Christopher Nolan Is Making The Odyssey 21 Years After Wolfgang Peterson’s Troy

Odysseus' Story Waited Two Decades For A Big Screen Epic

Troy's ending saw the sack of the city of Troy via the Greeks' Trojan horse gambit and the tragic death of Achilles, who was slain by Paris. After the city fell, a funeral pyre was held for Achilles, which was overseen by Odysseus. Troy's conclusion begged for a sequel adapting The Odyssey headlined by Sean Bean. However, despite Troy grossing nearly $500 million worldwide in 2004, no sequel to Troy materialized.

At last, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is the ersatz sequel that Troy never got. With plans to film throughout the Aeolian Islands in Sicily, Italy, using new IMAX technology, Nolan will finally give The Odyssey the high level of sophisticated filmmaking that made Oppenheimer one of 2023's biggest films.

Nolan assembled an enviable cast for The Odyssey, with Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong'o, Robert Pattinson, and many more ing Matt Damon's weary warrior on his titular odyssey.

Will The Odyssey Bring Back Hollywood’s Historical Epics?

Nolan Could Reignite An Entire Genre

Christopher Nolan is one of the few Academy Award-winning directors whose name alone sells his movies. Nolan's reputation and proven track record of high-end blockbusters like Inception, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer virtually guarantee audiences will flock to The Odyssey in 2026. Nolan's The Odyssey may singlehandedly reignite historical epics as a genre, provoking other studios to green-light their own sword-and-sandals spectacles.

Christopher Nolan is unlikely to cheat the magnitude of Odysseus' fateful voyage home.

Troy was, in part, a response to the critical and box office success of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. Wolfgang Petersen's Troy was a grand spectacle of bloody battles and expansive scope, but it had notable flaws. Among them, screenwriter David Benioff (co-creator of Game of Thrones) compressed the 10-year war of Troy into a few short weeks. As both writer and director of The Odyssey, the detail-focused Christopher Nolan is unlikely to cheat the magnitude of Odysseus' fateful voyage home.

Why Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey Is So Exciting

Nolan May Depict Epic The Greek Mythology Troy Didn't

Christopher Nolan's movies have been increasingly ambitious in scope, but The Odyssey could mark a departure for the director. Nolan's films are grounded in realism; even his tackling of magic in The Prestige, dreams in Inception, Batman's comic book mythology, and time reversal in Tenet, were rooted in reality. The Odyssey could mean Nolan truly indulging in historical fantasy for the first time, especially if he goes all in depicting the trials Odysseus faced in his 10-year voyage to Ithaca.

Troy avoided depicting the Greek gods, and downplayed Achilles' status as a demigod as the son of the sea nymph, Thetis.

A proper adaptation of The Odyssey would include fantastic creatures like the giant Cyclops, the witch Circe, the seductive Sirens, and the Greek gods Athena and Poseidon. It's an exciting turn for Nolan to utilize his filmmaking powers toward bringing classical Greek mythology, with its gods and monsters, to life. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is poised to not only be a makeshift sequel to Troy but to be a historical sand and sandals epic that goes far beyond what Troy accomplished.