Christopher Nolan has revealed that his next epic The Odyssey will be shorter than oppenheimer, offering a little peace of mind to the public before what is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious films of the decade.
Talking to him Associated Pressthe Oscar-winning filmmaker confirmed the news simply: “It’s an epic film, as the subject demands. But it’s shorter.”
oppenheimer ran at 180 minutes, so The Odyssey It will last less than three hours, although the exact running time has not yet been announced.
The scale of the project is extraordinary by any standard.
Nolan has previously revealed to empire magazine which shot more than two million feet of film during 91 days of production.
The Odyssey It also marks the first Hollywood feature film shot entirely with Imax cameras, a technical challenge that required a newly developed housing called a “blimp” to reduce camera noise enough to capture dialogue-based scenes on large format film.
Matt Damon leads the film as Odysseus, reuniting with Nolan afterward Interstellar and oppenheimer.
Tom Holland plays his son Telemachus, with a cast that also includes Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron and Jon Bernthal.
Nolan spoke candidly about the weight of adapting one of the most famous stories in human history.
“There is enormous pressure. Anyone who takes The Odyssey “It’s taking on people’s hopes and dreams for epic movies everywhere, and with that comes an enormous responsibility.”
It was based on the lessons learned from The dark knight trilogy when thinking about how to approach the beloved source material.
“What people want from a movie about a beloved story, a beloved set of characters, is a strong, sincere performance. They want to know that a filmmaker has put in the work to achieve that.”
He also explained why he felt the story had never been done justice on screen.
“What I saw is that all this great mythological cinematic work that I grew up with, the Ray Harryhausen films and other things, I had never seen done with the kind of weight and credibility that a big-budget production and a big Imax Hollywood production could achieve.”
He Odyssey opens in theaters on July 17 from Universal Pictures.
