Christoper Nolan’s The Odyssey | Himesh Patel, Samantha Morton, Bill Irwin are up next

Christopher Nolan
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With Mia Goth also reported to be in negotiations to feature in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the end credits for the film will not be short.


One of the most fun news threads of late 2024 was getting a weekly (or sometimes daily) casting announcement for Christopher Nolan’s planned take on The Odyssey. It ran through October to the year’s end. Along with all sorts of wild speculation about the nature of the project, gave us a kind of longer version of an advent calendar where a new name would be waiting for us every morning.

And what names! We’ll get to the full cast list in a moment, but before we do, let’s take a look at some of the new additions that have reportedly been added to the ranks. Deadline has stated that Himesh Patel, Samantha Morton and Bill Irwin have now joined the ever-growing ensemble.

As is customary with Nolan, both Patel and Irwin are returning members of the filmmaker’s stable of past collaborators. Patel previously worked with Nolan on 2020’s Tenet whereas Irwin had a part in 2014’s Interstellar. As for Morton, this will be her first collaboration with the director.

Here’s the cast list as it stands: Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Benny Safdie, Elliot Page, John Leguizamo, Bagpuss, Jon Bernthal and Charlize Theron will all appear, as will Patel, Morton and Irwin.

But wait! According to Daniel Richtman, Mia Goth is also in negotiations to sign up for a role in The Odyssey, which would add another exciting name to what is one of the most stacked cast lists we’ve seen in a long time. Is Nolan making a pre-emptive play for the new Best Casting Oscar (or whatever it ends up being called) when it launches in 2026? Is this his version of The Expendables?

By the time The Odyssey releases, we’ll have already seen one of those gongs awarded at the 2026 ceremony, so who knows how the Academy will choose to vote. With an ensemble like this though, we do know where a chunk of the film’s reported $250m budget is going, and should the Mia Goth report prove to be accurate, who knows how many more names could yet be added.

As for the story itself, Universal’s marketing team simply writes that The Odyssey is a “mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX technology” which “brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX film screens for the first time.”

We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it. Probably tomorrow, at this rate.

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