Flogging a wooden horse: how faithful will Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey be?

In a rare interview, the director has said he wants to do justice to Homer’s ‘original non-linear narrative’. How will that translate on screen? New trailer for Nolan’s The Odyssey released online The excitement around Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film of the Odyssey has been taken up a notch this week with the launch of a new trailer and the director appearing on Stephen Colbert’s US chatshow to give a rare interview. With fresh information emerging about the film, which is scheduled to be released on 17 July, it’s worth taking stock of what we know about Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus. And how faithful to the original poem is it likely to be? Details of the film have been emerging slowly over the past 10 months since a teaser was shown in cinemas before screenings of Jurassic World Rebirth in July. A six-minute “prologue” had a similar cinematic release in December and was closely followed by a trailer launched online just before Christmas. More footage was shown by Nolan at the CinemaCon trade show last month before the new trailer went up online this week. So we know that many of the Odyssey’s most ce