Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey holds its world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on Monday night, eleven days before the film opens in cinemas on July 17. It is the first public unveiling of the most expensive project of Nolan’s career.

The premiere caps a weekend of promotion in the city. On Sunday, Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o and Samantha Morton gathered for a cast photocall at the IET Building on Savoy Place, the group’s first joint public appearance for the film.

What Nolan has made this time

The Odyssey adapts Homer’s ancient Greek epic. Damon plays Odysseus, the king of Ithaca trying to get home after the Trojan War, with Hathaway as his wife Penelope, Zendaya as Athena and Morton as the enchantress Circe.

The film runs 2 hours and 52 minutes and carries an R rating. It is the first feature shot entirely with IMAX film cameras, and it will have exclusive access to IMAX screens for the first three weeks of its release in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Early word from inside the production

Press screenings began on July 6 in New York and Los Angeles, with the full review embargo holding until July 15. So the first verdicts from critics are still more than a week away.

Producer Emma Thomas has already raised expectations for one performance. She said Morton’s work as Circe drew a round of applause from the cast and crew, a reaction she compared to the response Heath Ledger got on The Dark Knight.

A big bet on a big screen

Universal is releasing the film in the peak of the summer window, a slot usually reserved for franchise titles. Nolan has filled it before with Oppenheimer, which turned a three-hour biography into one of the biggest films of 2023.

The Odyssey asks audiences to do something similar, this time for a three-thousand-year-old poem. Ticket pre-sales for IMAX showings opened months in advance, and early large-format showings drew heavy demand.

The first reviews land July 15, and the film reaches cinemas two days later.