Christopher Nolan confesses The Odyssey ‘has been an absolute nightmare’ | Films | Entertainment

Day 3 of CinemaCon has been wild on the celebrity appearances front, from Michael B Jordan and Ryan Gosling to Hugh Jackman and Jack Black.

Meanwhile, during the Universal presentation, we were treated not only to Steven Spielberg but also to Sir Christopher Nolan.

The Oscar-winning director kicked off the show (after Snoop Dogg announced his own biopic) to tease The Odyssey, the first film ever to be shot entirely with IMAX cameras.

Met with a standing ovation in The Dolby Colosseum of Caesars Palace, Nolan said he chose to adapt Homer’s epic because “it’s not a story, it’s the story” about Matt Damon’s Odysseus, King of Ithaca, who spends 20 years travelling home to his wife.

Nolan confessed: “This film has been an absolute nightmare, I’ll be the first to say, but in all the right ways. [Matt] was incredible. He was there on the boats, up the mountains, in the caves, in the beating sunshine, sideways rain, in so many different places that we went all over the world.” The Odyssey has been a globe-trotting shoot, with scenes captured in Morocco, Iceland, Italy, Greece and Scotland. Tenaciously powering through the elements was all part of the process, of course, with the filmmaker noting, “It’s meant to be difficult, that’s the nature of the story.”

Nolan then treated us to a few minutes of the film. Much of it was previously screened in cinemas pri,or to Avatar: Fire and Water last Christmas, including the Trojan horse flashback. But we were introduced to Charlize Theron’s Calypso, who seduces the heavily bearded Damon’s Odysseus sporting a thick American accent. It’s all very intense and beautifully shot, but what else would we expect from the greatest living film director?

The Odyssey hits UK cinemas on July 17, 2026.