Christopher Nolan Says Homer Was The Marvel of Its Day in The Odyssey Trailer
Christopher Nolan used the odyssey trailer conversation on Monday night to put Homer next to Marvel, saying the poet was “the Marvel of its day.” That framing lands as the director starts selling The Odyssey as a 2026 summer-season blockbuster, not just another prestige adaptation.
Nolan told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show that comic book culture grows out of Homeric epics. “Even comic book culture, whether you’re talking about Marvel or D.C. or all the rest, a lot of it comes directly from the Homeric Epics,” he said. He added, “The thing about Homer, it is the Marvel of its day. It’s very directly this desire for us to feel or believe gods could walk amongst us, and I think the modern comic book is kind of our expression of that.”
Tom Holland in Ithaca
Nolan also spent part of the interview on Tom Holland, who plays Odysseus’ son Telemachus. “He’s amazing,” Nolan said, then added, “I’ve not worked with him before, but I would love to work with him again. I mean, he’s just an incredible talent. He’s so, so great.” The comment puts Holland in the middle of a cast that already includes Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Odysseus’ wife and the queen of Ithaca.
Hathaway’s return matters on a different level: Nolan has worked with her before, and The Odyssey puts her back in one of his largest-scale projects. The cast list also runs through Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Mia Goth, Jon Bernthal, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Elliot Page and Benny Safdie, which keeps the film positioned as a major ensemble rather than a single-star vehicle.
Three hours under pressure
Nolan told the that The Odyssey is still “an epic film,” and that its run time is below the three-hour runtime of Oppenheimer. He also said adapting the story brings a “massive amount of pressure,” adding, “Anyone taking on ‘The Odyssey’ is taking on the hopes and dreams of people for epic movies everywhere and that comes with a huge responsibility.”
That pressure explains the way Nolan keeps returning to sincerity. “What I learned from [making ‘The Dark Knight’ trilogy] is that what people want from a movie about a beloved story, a beloved set of characters, is they want a strong and sincere interpretation,” he said. “They want to know that a filmmaker has gone to the mat for it.”
Devil Wears Prada 2
Nolan also said he watched The Devil Wears Prada 2 the night before the interview and called it “fabulous” and “Terrific,” with Emily Blunt in the film. The lighter aside fit the night’s larger message: Nolan is promoting The Odyssey as a serious, big-scale release, but he is also drawing a clean line between ancient myth and the modern blockbuster machine.
For readers tracking the film’s trajectory, the useful takeaway is simple: Nolan is already defining The Odyssey as a commercial event with mythic branding, and he is doing it months before release. If the movie arrives with the audience he is inviting, it will be because he has sold Homer not as homework, but as the original superhero universe.
