There's a huge amount of excitement among film fans for Christopher Nolan's swords-and-sandals epic The Odyssey, but it turns out that wasn't the first time he almost tackled the genre.
Speaking to Empire Magazine (via Variety), the filmmaker revealed that he was attached to the 2004 film Troy. However, when Warner Bros. decided to hand the project over to Wolfgang Petersen, Nolan was presented with an alternative: 2005's Batman Begins.
"I was originally hired by Warner Bros. to direct 'Troy,'" The Dark Knight Trilogy helmer explained. "Wolfgang [Petersen] had developed it, and so when the studio decided not to proceed with his superhero movie ['Batman Vs Superman'], he wanted it back."
"At the end of the day, it was a world that I was very interested to explore," Nolan continued. "So it’s been at the back of my mind for a very long time. Certain images, particularly. How I wanted to handle the Trojan horse, things like that."
He'd go on to say that Batman Begins was presented to him as a "consolation prize" for the fact that he was pulled off Troy. It was Nolan's take on the Caped Crusader that spawned a hugely successful trilogy. Comprised of three movies, many fans still feel the series ranks among the superhero genre's best offerings.
Troy, which starred Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, and Diane Kruger, received mixed reviews but, with such a star-studded cast, still earned almost $500 million worldwide.
"As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before," Nolan later said of tackling The Odyssey. "And what I saw is that all of this great mythological cinematic work that I had grown up with – Ray Harryhausen movies and other things – I’d never seen that done with the sort of weight and credibility that an A-budget and a big Hollywood, IMAX production could do."
The cast of The Odyssey includes Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron, Benny Safdie, Elliot Page, Jon Bernthal, and Mia Goth.
"Christopher Nolan’s next film The Odyssey is a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology," Universal Pictures revealed last December. "The film brings Homer’s foundational saga to Imax film screens for the first time and opens in theaters everywhere on July 17, 2026."
The Odyssey arrives in theaters on July 17, 2026. Would you have liked to see the filmmaker's take on Troy?