The excitement around Christopher Nolan\u2019s 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\u2019s US chatshow to give a rare interview.<\/p>\n
With fresh information emerging about the film, which is scheduled to be released on 17 July, it\u2019s worth taking stock of what we know about Nolan\u2019s adaptation of Homer\u2019s ancient Greek epic, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus. And how faithful to the original poem is it likely to be?<\/p>\n
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 \u201cprologue\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The new trailer for The Odyssey.<\/p>\n
So we know that many of the Odyssey\u2019s most celebrated characters and scenes are going to feature in the film: the trailers show us glimpses of the Cyclops, the whirlpool Charybdis and Odysseus summoning the spirits of the dead. The crisis on Odysseus\u2019 home island of Ithaca is depicted in the latest trailer, with Robert Pattinson in arch-villainous form as Antinous, the most odious of the suitors who are laying claim to Odysseus\u2019 wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and tormenting his son, Telemachus (Tom Holland).<\/p>\n
Nolan has been unable to resist including the famous wooden horse, the ruse devised by Odysseus to enable the Greeks to break into Troy, which features in the first trailer as well as being the subject of December\u2019s prologue.<\/p>\n
Homer does not in fact tell the story of the horse in the Odyssey, but it is alluded to: Odysseus asks a bard to recount the tale and the Spartan king Menelaus mentions it when Telemachus visits him to ask for news of his father.<\/p>\n
We have yet to see how Nolan depicts the sorceress Circe turning men into pigs and back again, or hear how composer Ludwig G\u00f6ransson will make the Sirens sound. But it looks as if most if not all of the Odyssey\u2019s greatest hits will be brought to life on screen, with even Odysseus\u2019 dog, Argos, making it into the new trailer.<\/p>\n
Nolan \u2013 who has become Hollywood\u2019s leading maker of cerebral spectaculars since helming the Dark Knight trilogy \u2013 is a natural fit for the Odyssey, with its vast canvas and timeless themes of family ties, homecoming and revenge.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Nolan on Colbert. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re always looking for something that hasn\u2019t been done before,\u201d Nolan told Colbert on Monday night, explaining what drew him to the project. \u201cAnd Greek mythology \u2026 hadn\u2019t really been done on a kind of A-budget, big studio, throw everything at the screen and see what sticks kind of way \u2026 It\u2019s just one of the great adventure stories and I really wanted to see it done justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is perhaps surprising that the Odyssey has not been given a definitive cinematic treatment before. The epic boom of the 1950s and 1960s took inspiration from the Bible and ancient Rome rather than Greek myth, although there is a rather lightweight Italian \u201cpeplum\u201d film of the Odyssey from that time: Ulysses (1954) starring Kirk Douglas. Last year\u2019s The Return, with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, concentrated on the latter part of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus plots his revenge on the suitors, and omitted the most colourful material. The richest screen versions of the story have been for TV: an eight-part Italian TV series from 1968 and a 1997 mini-series starring Armand Assante and Greta Scacchi.<\/p>\n
Matt Damon is Odysseus and Zendaya is Athena in The Odyssey. Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon\/Universal Pictures<\/p>\n