Having earned a reputation for always breaking new ground in cinema, Christopher Nolan seems to have taken his filmmaking to a whole new level with his upcoming epic, The Odyssey, spending up to four months on the sea to shoot the feature. In a recent interview, the two-time Academy Award winner not only shared his experience being on ocean waters for such a prolonged time but also revealed that he has already shot close to 400 miles of film for his next movie.
Christopher Nolan on filming The Odyssey at sea on a grand scale
While talking to Empire Magazine, Christopher Nolan detailed how he captured scenes on the sea on such an epic scale, stating that the entire ordeal felt “pretty primal” to him.
“I’ve been out on it for the last four months,” the visionary director said about the time he spent on water filming The Odyssey. “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,” he added.
Nolan also disclosed that he has already “shot over two million feet of film,” which roughly translates into 400 miles of reel used.
Talking about what motivated him to go to such lengths to secure his desired shots, Nolan explained, “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, starring Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Jon Bernthal, and Charlize Theron, among other Hollywood A-listers, is currently on track to hit theaters on July 17, 2026.
Originally reported by Apoorv Rastogi on ComingSoon.
