The debut trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has revealed a first look at characters played by Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, and Matt Damon.
The Odyssey, written and directed by Nolan and due out July 17, 2026, is based on Homer’s saga, and is described as “a mythic action epic,” shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology. The Odyssey stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson and Lupita Nyong’o, with Zendaya and Charlize Theron.
A film by Christopher Nolan shot entirely with IMAX film cameras. Watch The Odyssey trailer and experience the film in theaters 7 17 26. pic.twitter.com/Lqap9dFI09
— The Odyssey Movie (@odysseymovie) December 22, 2025
The trailer begins at the burial site of scores of soldiers. Matt Damon’s Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of Ithaca, narrates, saying that after years of war, nothing can stand between his men and home. We then see Spider-Man star Tom Holland as Telemachus, Odysseus’s son who is determined to find his father. A concerned Anne Hathaway, as Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, looks on.
We then get perhaps the most iconic shot of the movie, as Trojan soldiers drag the famous Trojan Horse from the sea. Inside, Damon and his soldiers hide, silently. One soldier, cut by a sword that pierces the horse, is forced to stay silent by his desperate comrades.
We then get a shot of the “mythic” part of The Odyssey with a brief look at what appears to be a giant humanoid (the Cyclops, perhaps?), who enters a cave filled with soldiers. Later, the undead appear to rise from the ground itself. There’s a classic sail during a storm scene, where a hapless crewmate is washed overboard. The trailer ends with Penelope asking Odysseus to promise he will return. Odysseus responds: “what if I can’t?”
Damon recently recalled an incident during filming where Holland personally called the head of Sony Pictures to arrange for one of the company’s pristine 70mm prints of the classic film Lawrence of Arabia to be shown to The Odyssey’s cast. “Tom Holland, because he’s Spider-Man and he’s everybody’s favourite at that studio, called [Sony Pictures boss Tom] Rothman and he arranged for us to screen it on a Sunday, the full four hours,” Damon said.
The Odyssey is Nolan’s 13th film, after previously helming Following, Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer. Such is the anticipation for the movie, that a limited number of The Odyssey tickets went on sale during the summer — a year in advance of the film opening.
While Nolan has long been celebrated as one of the great directors of modern cinema, The Odyssey is expected to perform particularly strongly following the breakout success of Oppenheimer, the Cillian Murphy-led biopic that fuelled one half of the Barbenheimer phenomenon. Oppenheimer earned a staggering $975 million during its theatrical run, and walked away with Best Picture at the Oscars.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
