Matt Damon had "the best experience of his career" filming Christopher Nolan's upcoming epic The Odyssey. In the retelling of Homer's epic Greek poem, the actor takes on the lead role of Odysseus, who embarks on a decade-spanning journey home to his wife, Penelope, after the Trojan War. Nolan is known for practical filmmaking on a grand scale, so The Odyssey was a massive production involving gigantic sets and props, thousands of extras and open seas. Recalling the shoot, Damon told Empire magazine: ”I can say, without hyperbole, that it was the best experience of my career... I saw the (Trojan) horse on the beach and I was just like, 'F--k.' It was just so cool.” The Bourne Identity star, who had worked with Nolan twice before, got in peak physical shape because he knew that the filmmaker would expect him to do as much as possible himself. ”If you're going to have an existential crisis as you pass the Sirens and you're lashed to a mast, it's there. If it says you're running for your life from a Cyclops, you're going to run for your life. Chris doesn't hide the ball.”. The Oppenheimer director told the publication that he spent four months filming the scenes on Odysseus' ship at sea rather than inside a studio.”We got the cast who play the crew of Odysseus' ship out there on the real waves, in the real places," he shared. ”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. Because you're confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you.” The epic will be released in cinemas on 17 July 2026.