Mumbai, July 7, 2026: It can be easily said that Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is probably the most anticipated movie of the year, even though, uncharacteristically, one of its trailers received more dislikes than likes on YouTube.
The film is about Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, and his perilous journey home after the Trojan War, and his encounters with mythical beings like the Cyclops, the Sirens and the nymph Calypso, while he tries to reunite with his wife, Penelope.
Starring a stellar cast comprising Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron and Zendaya, this adaptation of Homer's ancient epic is poised to be a cinematic spectacle.
Hollywood's Early Adaptations
However, over the last 70 years, Hollywood has given us several versions of The Odyssey, even in animated form.
Two of the earliest ones can be traced back to the 1950s. Ulysses (1954) was a fantasy adventure film, which starred Kirk Douglas in the title role.
The film was directed by Mario Camerini and produced by Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti. An international co-production between Italy, France and the United States, it was the highest-grossing film in Italy that year, grossing 1.8 billion lire (Italy's currency until 2002). Interestingly, Douglas met his second wife, Anne Buydens, during the making of the film.
Trojan War On Screen
Two years later saw the release of Helen of Troy (1956), again an American-Italian-French epic historical drama film, based on both Homer's Iliad and The Odyssey. Both Ulysses and Helen of Troy were originally intended to be made in 3D, but that plan fell through.
Achilles, just to clarify, is not a main character in Homer's The Odyssey and is only seen briefly as a ghost in the Underworld when Odysseus visits the realm of the dead. For millennials, he made a grand return to pop culture with Troy (2004), in which Brad Pitt played Achilles, based on the 10-year Trojan War. To differentiate clearly, while The Iliad is about the Trojan War, The Odyssey is about Odysseus's journey home after the war has ended.
Modern Retellings
More recently, audiences saw The Return (2024), starring Ralph Fiennes, a retelling of the second half of Homer's The Odyssey, while one of the most remembered versions is the one from 1997, also titled The Odyssey, an Emmy-winning NBC television miniseries. Animated adaptations have also had several versions, including The Animated Odyssey (2000), a four-part HBO miniseries, and The Odyssey: A Journey Back Home (1992).
Coming back to the present, on July 17, when the film is released worldwide, we shall find out how Nolan's retelling of the nearly 3,000-year-old epic poem, reportedly made on a budget of $250 million, performs at the box office and, more importantly, how much it thrills audiences.
