Sir Christopher Nolan nearly helmed Brad Pitt’s Troy before directing The Odyssey
Long before helming The Odyssey, Sir Christopher Nolan had been attached to direct the 2004 Greek mythology blockbuster Troy.
Sir Christopher Nolan nearly directed Troy.
The 55-year-old filmmaker is to helm a movie adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, but Nolan has revealed he had nearly dabbled in Greek mythology years prior with Brad Pitt’s 2004 historical epic before director Wolfgang Petersen ultimately got the job.
Speaking with Empire magazine, he said: “Wolfgang had developed it, and so when the studio decided not to proceed with his superhero movie Batman Vs Superman], he wanted it back. Fair enough.
“But at the end of the day, it was a world that I was very interested to explore. 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.”
Nolan added he had been interested in Greek mythology from an early age.
He recounted: “I remember seeing a school play of Ulysses [the Latin variant of Odysseus] when I was five or six years old.
“The older kids were doing it. I remember the Sirens and him being strapped to the mast and things like that. But that's barely a conscious memory.
“I think it's in all of us, really. And when you start to break down the text and adapt it, you find that all of these other films - and all the films I've worked on - you know, they're all from The Odyssey.
“Emma [Thomas, Nolan's wife and fellow producer] said it best when we first announced the project: it's foundational.”
Turning his attention to The Odyssey, Nolan said he used “over two million feet of film” on the movie.
The Oppenheimer director said: “I’ve been out on it for the last four months. We got the cast who play the crew of Odysseus’ ship out there on the real waves, in the real places. And yeah, it’s vast and terrifying and wonderful and benevolent, as the conditions shift.
“We really wanted to capture how hard those journeys would have been for people. And the leap of faith that was being made in an unmapped, uncharted world.”
The Inception filmmaker joked shooting on open seas was “pretty primal”, adding production for The Odyssey lasted 91 days.
Reflecting on the upcoming blockbuster, Nolan explained he had chosen to adapt The Odyssey because he wanted to fill in “gaps in cinematic culture”.
He said: “There’s a bit of everything in it. I mean, it truly contains all stories.
“As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before.
“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 Odyssey follows the king of Ithaca Odysseus (Matt Damon) as he struggles to return home after the fall of Troy, confronting monsters, gods and the consequences of his own choices along the way.
Meanwhile, his wife Penelope and son Telemachus (Tom Holland) fight to protect their fractured kingdom as they await the man who may never return.
The Odyssey also stars Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Mia Goth, Jon Bernthal, Charlize Theron, Anne Hathaway and Elliot Page.
