Christopher Nolan’s second trailer for The Odyssey shifts from pure mood to a clear narrative, revealing Matt Damon’s haunted Odysseus, Charlize Theron’s Circe, and Robert Pattinson’s menacing Antinous. With furious seas, colossal mythic creatures, and a besieged Ithaca, the IMAX-shot epic sets up a tense homecoming drama and a high-stakes follow-up to Oppenheimer.
The first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arrived in December, and now we thank the gods as the second trailer dropped on Monday night’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Where the first trailer was mood, weather, and a Cyclops glimpsed through fog, this one has dialogue. We see more of the plot, finally some dialogue, Charlize Theron’s Calypso, and finally a peak into Pattinson’s villain.
The opening shot is Charlize Theron’s Circe asking Matt Damon’s Odysseus what he remembers.
“A wife, a son. We won the war,” he says, before cutting to a man pleading with the gods to let him go home. From there it is exactly the trailer Nolan has been threatening to make for two years: oceans that look genuinely angry, a Cyclops that fills the entire frame, a Trojan Horse that looms more than it tricks, and Damon — bearded, gaunt, a year of training on him — staring down divine weather.
There is also, finally, a story. Back in Ithaca, Pattinson’s Antinous has installed himself in the king’s house and is making a case for the throne. “This is a household waiting for a master,” he tells Penelope. “I want you to choose me.” He’s also working on Telemachus, telling him he’s “pining for a daddy you didn’t even know, like some sniveling bastard.” Telemachus shoots back: “My dad is coming home.”
It is the cleanest plot setup, and its classic Odyssey. The wife holding the line. The son holding the faith. The villain holding the house. The king somewhere very far away, possibly dying, possibly not.
By the end of the trailer, even Penelope’s certainty cracks. “That world is gone,” she admits.
Not going to lie, but the “daddy” line is really throwing us off the track here.
This has dominated reactions online: Pattinson telling Telemachus he’s “pining for a daddy you didn’t even know.” Meanwhile, Holland’s response — “my dad is coming home” — has gotten the same treatment.
I mean, is there a reason for the sudden gear-shit from Shakespearean grandeur to daddy in the late Bronze Age? I’m sure Mycenaean Greece wasn’t calling each other daddy.
Whether you find it jarring or correct depends on how much faith you have in Nolan as a writer of speech rather than spectacle, which is — historically — the most contested part of his work. Damon’s lines land with the usual gravelly authority, but Holland’s do not. Whether this is a script issue or a casting one will be one of the things people argue about until July.
For now, the visuals continue to do what Nolan’s visuals always do: shut everyone up the moment they’re on a big screen.
Damon as Odysseus, Hathaway as Penelope, Holland as Telemachus, Pattinson as Antinous, Theron as Calypso, and Zendaya as Athena, the goddess shielding Odysseus on his journey.
Add to that Lupita Nyong’o, Jon Bernthal as Menelaus, Benny Safdie as Agamemnon, John Leguizamo as Eumaeus, Mia Goth as Melantho, Himesh Patel as Eurylochus, Jimmy Gonzales as Cepheus, plus Will Yun Lee, Elliot Page, and Jovan Adepo in roles still under wraps.
The Odyssey is Nolan’s most expensive film, with a reported budget of around $250 million. It is also the first narrative feature ever shot entirely on IMAX 70mm cameras — a technical bet that only Nolan could have pulled off, and only because he has spent the last decade making the case that the format still matters.
It is releasing on July 17, 2026, the same day as Sony and Disney’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The parallels to the Oppenheimer/Barbie face-off in 2023 are obvious, and Universal is leaning into them. In India, the film is being released in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu alongside English.
The expectations are enormous. Oppenheimer grossed $958 million worldwide and won seven Oscars including Best Picture. The follow-up to that is, by definition, a difficult film. The source material is unfamiliar to general audiences. The runtime will be long. The dialogue, judging by this trailer, will be polarising.
But Nolan has earned the benefit of the doubt more times than almost any director working today. And whatever else this film is, it will not be small. July is going to be loud.