Nolan’s Matt Damon Leads The Odyssey Official New Trailer
The odyssey official new trailer is out, and Christopher Nolan’s next film now has its first full-length look online. Matt Damon leads a cast that also includes Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, while the footage points to a large-scale studio release built around Homer’s epic.
Nolan is back with his first film since Oppenheimer, which won best picture and best director at the 2024 Oscars. That gives this trailer extra weight inside the business: the director who just delivered the industry’s top prizes is now selling another expensive gamble, one reported at $250m and shot entirely on Imax cameras.
Matt Damon as Odysseus
Damon plays Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and the trailer keeps the plot simple: he is heading home from the Trojan War to rescue his wife and son. The footage shows battle scenes, treacherous sea voyages and flashes from the war, while Odysseus says, “Help me go home,” and later, “No-one can stand between me and home,” before adding, “Not even the Gods.”
That framing gives the film a direct commercial pitch. Nolan is selling a classical story as a big-format event, not a classroom exercise, and the cast list backs that up with Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Prince Telemachus, Charlize Theron as the nymph Calypso and Robert Pattinson as Antinous.
Penelope and Telemachus
The trailer also hands the audience the home-front stakes in plain language. Penelope says, “Ithaca's king is coming back,” and Telemachus adds, “My dad is coming home,” which keeps the movie’s emotional line tied to the return journey rather than the war itself.
Beyond Damon, the cast stretches across the Greek court and the road back to Ithaca: John Leguizamo plays Eumaeus, Jon Bernthal plays Menelaus, Benny Safdie plays Agamemnon, Zendaya plays the goddess Athena, Himesh Patel plays Eurylochus, Mia Goth plays Melantho, and Jimmy Gonzales plays Cepheus. Lupita Nyong'o and Will Yun Lee are also in the cast, which signals a broad ensemble rather than a two-hander built only around Odysseus.
IMAX and $250m
The reported $250m budget and all-Imax shoot are the friction points inside the appeal. Nolan has made the trailer look like an event picture, but the scale of the spend means the film will need more than prestige and literary recognition; it has to sell itself as a theatrical experience with a technical edge that can justify the price.
For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: the movie is being positioned early as a major release, with the trailer doing the first round of marketing work months before audiences see the finished film. For the studio, the bet is that Nolan’s name, the $250m scale and the Imax presentation can turn a 20-year-old story into a current box-office proposition.
