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Credit: Universal
Christopher Nolan’s monumental adaptation of Homer’s enduring classic tale The Odyssey recently wrapped filming after just over three months of production, with the auteur director telling Empire that he shot over two million feet of film – nearly 400 miles worth – including filming on the open ocean.
To accomplish this feat, Nolan says he personally spent “four months” at sea, calling the experience “pretty primal.”
“We shot over two million feet of film,” Nolan explains. “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.
“By embracing the physicality of the real world in the making of the film, you do inform the telling of the story in interesting ways,” he continues. “Because you’re confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you.”
Shooting on open water is considered one of the hardest tasks in filmmaking thanks to the unpredictable nature of ocean weather and the extreme difficulty of repeating important shots on an ever shifting plane that naturally separates the objects floating on it.
It’s such a thankless endeavor that legendary Jaws director Steven Spielberg once warned Kevin Costner against filming his massive flop Waterworld on the ocean – advice Costner ignored, leading to one of the most notoriously challenging and expensive movie shoots of all time.
In keeping with that principle, part of what made the tale of The Odyssey so daunting to ancient Greeks is its nature as a story that takes place on the open sea, a place that was seen as extremely hazardous and even mythically dangerous to most Mediterranean people, who largely would have traveled not far from the coast to maintain their orientation.
Navigation too far from land would also have been difficult due the challenges in determining a ship’s geographic longitude with no orienting features. Though latitude can be found by observing the position of stars, the problem of determining longitude was not fully solved until the introduction of the first accurate measuring instrument in 1773.
The Odyssey is scheduled to release in theaters on July 17, 2026. For more, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming movies heading your way for the rest of the year.
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