Christopher Nolan says he has used over more than 2 million ft of film for his adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey, which is in post-production, after the director finished shooting in August.
In an interview with Empire magazine, Nolan said: “I’ve been out on [the sea] for the last four months. We got the cast who play the crew of Odysseus’s ship out there on the real waves, in the real places … We really wanted to capture how hard those journeys would have been for people. And the leap of faith that was being made in an unmapped, uncharted world.” Then he added: “We shot over 2 million ft of film.”
Nolan also outlined his reasons for picking the project, having been in line to direct another Homeric epic, Troy, more than two decades ago. “As a film-maker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before. And what I saw is that all of this great mythological cinematic work that I had grown up with – Ray Harryhausen movies and other things – I’d never seen that done with the sort of weight and credibility that an A-budget and a big Hollywood, Imax production could do.”
He added: “By embracing the physicality of the real world in the making of the film, you do inform the telling of the story in interesting ways. Because you’re confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you.”
Speaking to the same magazine, Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus, was effusive in his compliments for Nolan: “I can say, without hyperbole, that it was the best experience of my career … “I saw the [Trojan] horse on the beach and I was just like, ‘Fuck’. It was just so cool.”
Nolan’s film, which also stars Tom Holland as Odysseus’s son Telemachus, has been entirely shot on large format Imax cameras, and is due for release in July 2026.
