CinemaCon 2026: Christopher Nolan Unveils Epic “The Odyssey” Footage, Shot Entirely in IMAX

Any time that Christopher Nolan takes to the stage at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, he comes bearing the kind of cinematic spectacle the movie theater was created for. At this year’s Con, Nolan might have brought his grandest, most ambitious project yet.

Nolan was on hand in Vegas to unveil a glimpse at his adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, one of the greatest epics ever written. It’s safe to say that, along with Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, Nolan is one of the theater’s most passionate advocates. His films are designed to be seen on the biggest screens possible (hence his longtime collaboration with IMAX). Jim Orr, Universal Pictures’ president of domestic theatrical distribution, described Nolan’s film last year as a “mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology.” Nolan, his longtime collaborator cinematographer Hoyt van Hoytema, and his team were able to deploy brand-new IMAX cameras after Nolan asked the company if they could resolve some of the camera’s problems, which IMAX then delivered. Hoytema and his team used new, lighter-weight cameras this time around. The Odyssey is the first film shot entirely with IMAX cameras.

Nolan was greeted with a standing ovation when he took the stage at the Colosseum. The man is not an attention seeker, however, and he deflected the applause by saying he was just happy he wasn’t following Steven Spielberg’s presentation of his new sci-fi film Disclosure Day. 

Nolan then pivoted to why he had decided to follow up his Oscar-winning historical epic Oppenheimer with the story of Odysseus and his long, oft-thwarted attempt to get home to his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) on Ithaca after the Trojan War.

“Why ‘The Odyssey?’ ‘The Odyssey’ is a story that has fascinated generation after generation for 3,000 years,” Nolan said. “It’s not a story. It’s the story.”

Then it was time to have a look at what Nolan and his team had created. Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, and footage revealed him sitting shirtless on a beach with his full beard. He’s not alone—he’s with Calypso, a goddess who has kept Odysseus on her island of Ogygia for years against his will. Odysseus says that he can’t remember anything before Troy. “Did I have a wife. Children. Maybe a son? If I had a son, how old would he be now?”

Nolan also revealed footage of the iconic Trojan horse attack, which Odysseus devised to allow the Greeks to penetrate Troy, hidden inside a massive wooden horse. The sequence shows thousands of men pulling the horse from the beach, where it washed up, and wheeling it into the city. They plunge their swords into the horse to see if anyone is hiding inside, forcing the Greeks to remain absolutely quiet despite the blades slicing into people’s bodies and faces.

“This has been an absolute nightmare to film — but in all the right ways,” Nolan said of the production. The Odyssey was filmed across Greece, Morocco, Italy (including on “goat island,” a part of Sicily), Iceland, and Scotland. “We had an amazing time.” Nolan called Damon his “partner on this journey” and called his work “incredible.”

“He was there on the boats, up the mountains, in the caves, in the beating sunshine, sideways rain, wind,” Nolan said. “You’ll be pleased to know how difficult it was. It was meant to be; that’s the nature of this story.”

Additional footage showed Odysseus and his men on a raging sea during a storm, and finally, a shot showed Odysseus and his soldiers facing down the man-eating cyclops Polyphemus.

Damon, Hathaway, Holland, and Theron are joined by a terrific ensemble—always the case in a Nolan film—that includes Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, and Himesh Patel. Given the robust call sheet, Nolan joked there were too many stars to feasibly bring with him to CinemaCon.

“How do you go about bringing this to a modern audience? Obviously, we start with the cast,” Nolan said. “It’ll be quicker for me to tell you who isn’t in the movie. I would have brought them all here, but the massive weight of extraordinary talent would have collapsed the stage.”

Regarding filming entirely in Imax, Nolan said it was the result of many, many years of working toward this moment.

“As a boy, all I wanted to do was tell large-scale [stories] using that technology, putting the audience into the world,” he said. “And I spent many, many years trying to bring that to fruition, starting with The Dark Knight, back when I was in my 30s. We shot the action sequences [in Imax], but we were never able to shoot the entire film. My crew did an incredible job figuring out how to do this for the first time.”

The Odyssey arrives in theaters, including, of course, Imax, on July 17.

Featured image: “The Odyssey” poster. Courtesy Universal Pictures.