Credit: TCM
Thu 30 July 2026 2:30, UK
Occasionally, a film will be so successful that it has a knock-on effect for other movies of the same type, and we’re seeing that at the moment with the jaw-dropping Christopher Nolan blockbuster The Odyssey.
Currently selling out cinemas all over the world and on track to be by far the highest-grossing movie of the year (that is, until the Russo brothers deliver Avengers: Doomsday in December), Nolan’s swords-and-sandals epic has people rushing around to watch anything similar to slake their thirst for gods, monsters and ancient poems. And that’s why 2004’s Troy is having such a comeback.
Starring a host of big names like Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Orlando Bloom, Rose Byrne and Peter O’Toole, it was the Wolfgang Petersen movie that was loosely based on Homer’s Iliad and that, like The Odyssey, features the Trojan war and many of the same characters, such as Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus and Helen of Troy. Again, like Nolan’s latest effort, Troy was filmmaking on an enormous scale.
Petersen was handed an astronomic budget of up to $175million to put the movie together, making it one of the most expensive films of all time at that point, and shooting took place across three different countries using thousands of extras, with a replica city of Troy built in Malta. Filming was certainly not without its issues, as they first had to abandon filming in Morocco after the Iraq war began, then they were hit by a hurricane, and then lead star Brad Pitt picked up an ironically titled Achilles heel injury.
But there were also some problems between the many stars on board, not least O’Toole, who, according to Kruger, was often drunk and full of himself, as she recalled some time later, “You know who wasn’t very pleasant, was Peter O’Toole. It kind of sucked… He’s dead, so I can say that, but he wasn’t the most pleasant person.”
O’Toole, for his part, didn’t enjoy the experience either and enjoyed the finished film even less. Along with many critics who slated the movie on release, the actor wasn’t impressed at all, calling the German director Petersen a clown and walking out of a screening less than an hour in, telling Radio Times, “I call it ‘Trovis’; after watching 50 minutes I found myself in quiet despair, and suddenly that Hovis advert came into my mind over Brad Pitt’s face. I got the chuckles and had to leave.”
Quite which advert for the British bread brand O’Toole is referring to isn’t made clear, but it’s probably ‘The Bike Ride’, the 1973 Ridley Scott-directed clip featuring a young baker’s boy pushing his bike up, and then cycling down, a steep hill with a basket full of doughy goodness.
Further reading: Cutting Room Floor
Pitt actually wasn’t a fan of the finished version of Troy either, describing having to make the movie as painful, saying that he only did it because he pulled out of a different film and was contractually obliged to do so by the studio. He was another of the actors who criticised the director, comparing Petersen unfavourably to David Fincher, with whom he made Seven a decade earlier.
Despite all the problems, Troy was a huge success when it came out, bringing in $500m at the box office and getting something of a critical reevaluation a few years later when Petersen released a director’s cut in 2007, which pushed the runtime to a bottom-numbing 196 minutes.
