After anticipation building for years and showings selling out months in advance, movie fans will at last get to see Christopher Nolan’s latest epic, “The Odyssey,” on the big screen. And, it is set to be his last film for a while, he revealed.
The auteur’s newest movie, out July 17, stars Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Tom Holland and more A-list actors in the Homer adaptation. Bringing the Greek epic to life required elaborate sets, a massive Trojan horse and Nolan’s distinct vision.
The director and producer, who also penned the screenplay based on Homer’s work, appeared on TODAY July 17 and detailed how challenging it was to pull off the masterpiece after conceptualizing the flick for two decades.
In his sit-down with TODAY correspondent Kaylee Hartung, he explained why now was the perfect time to release the expected summer blockbuster.
“Now, I can get something made that I couldn’t otherwise get made. For me to take on Greek mythology on a big modern cinematic canvas is something that hasn’t been done,” Nolan said.
He added that the story combines many different genres.
“There’s so much in it for everybody,” he continued. “It’s a love story. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a story about war and homecoming. And I think that’s the eternal appeal of ‘The Odyssey.’”
Although cinephiles will have to wait a few days to see how vast that appeal is, early tracking shows “The Odyssey” could open to $200 million globally, Deadline reports.
The film is Nolan’s first since the Academy Award-winning “Oppenheimer,” which earned the director his first-ever Oscar and seven wins in total.
Fans had to wait three years for Nolan’s return with “The Odyssey.” So, when can they expect his next project?
When asked if that pattern would continue and it would be “another three years” before his next release.
He replied, “Oh, at least.”
It’s understandable given that balancing multiple genres in a nearly three-hour film was difficult for everyone involved, including Nolan.
He recalled warning Damon during one of their first conversations about “The Odyssey” that making the movie would be tough.
“I have a feeling he didn’t really understand until we got on the boat,” Nolan shared. “It’s not until you get there and you start, you know, hiking up a goat’s path to cyclops’ cave.”
He said it was at that moment that Damon had “a sort of slow creeping realization” filming was “not going to be easy.”
The Oscar-winner revealed “The Odyssey” pushed him to his limits.
“I definitely hit the limits of my own stamina and everybody’s stamina, I think. I mean, it’s ‘The Odyssey,’ of course it should be difficult,” he noted. “We’re not doing the job right making a film of ‘The Odyssey’ if it doesn’t seem difficult.”
The movie is making history as the first Hollywood production to be shot entirely on IMAX 70 millimeter film. Nolan told Hartung he needed to use the format to make the audience feel as though they were actually in a cave with a cyclops or aboard the deck of Odysseus’ ship.
He explained, “For ‘The Odyssey,’ I went to IMAX and I said, ‘Look, if ever we are going to fulfill this dream of shooting the entire movie that way, this is the one. This is ‘The Odyssey.’”
“And so for the first time ever, I finally realized that dream of doing a film that way,” added the director, who has been making movies for over 25 years.
Now that his passion project has been released, he hopes audiences flock to theaters to “experience, honestly, one of the greatest adventures” and, of course, be entertained.
He predicts they’ll have “a really phenomenal time.”