Elliot Page as Sinon in The Odyssey: The Soldier Who Talked Troy Into Its Downfall

Elliot Page walked the red carpet at the world premiere of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey in London on July 6, 2026, as the film heads toward its July 17 theatrical release. Entertainment Weekly's first-reactions coverage confirmed the date and location: the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square.

Page's Role: Sinon and the Trojan Horse

Entertainment Weekly's cast guide identifies Page as Sinon, a Greek soldier and Odysseus's cousin who fought in the Trojan War. Sinon's story comes primarily from Virgil's Aeneid rather than Homer's Odyssey, his defining act is one of calculated deception. After the Greeks built the Trojan Horse and faked their retreat by sea, Sinon stayed behind and let himself be captured. He convinced the Trojans he'd been abandoned by his own side and that the horse was a sacred offering to Athena that would protect the city if brought inside its walls. The Trojans believed him and hauled it in. His lie was the piece that got the horse past the walls, the sack of Troy still took the soldiers hidden inside it, the returning Greek fleet, and a night of street fighting to finish.

Casting a Virgil character rather than sticking to Homer's text suggests Nolan is drawing on the wider classical tradition of the Troy story, not just the Odyssey itself. That reading was borne out this spring: Nolan debuted new footage in April 2026 showing the Trojan Horse's arrival and a nighttime raid on Troy, indicating the film opens with the war's final act before following Odysseus home.

Speaking to Variety at New York Comic Con in October 2025, Page said working with Nolan again after Inception left him "completely jazzed and excited." He also described what the reunion meant now that he's more comfortable in himself, telling People it "meant so much" to have a Nolan set experience again.

Page's first collaboration with Nolan was Inception in 2010, in which he played Ariadne, the architecture student who designs the film's dream layouts. The Odyssey marks his first major studio role since coming out as a trans man in 2020, a milestone widely noted in coverage of his casting.

The Principal Cast

The Associated Press confirmed the principal roles during the film's CinemaCon presentation. Matt Damon plays Odysseus, the king of Ithaca whose journey home after the war forms the core of the epic. Anne Hathaway plays his wife, Penelope. Tom Holland plays their son, Telemachus. Zendaya plays Athena. Robert Pattinson plays Antinous, the chief suitor pursuing Penelope in Odysseus's absence.

The Entertainment Weekly cast guide confirms further roles Lupita Nyong'o plays both Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Charlize Theron plays Calypso, Samantha Morton plays Circe, Jon Bernthal plays Menelaus, Benny Safdie plays Agamemnon, Himesh Patel plays Eurylochus, John Leguizamo plays Eumaeus, Mia Goth plays Melantho, and Travis Scott plays a Homeric bard, a casting choice Nolan has linked to the analogy between ancient oral poetry and rap.

The cast extends well beyond these headline roles. Bill Irwin voices the Cyclops Polyphemus, James Remar plays the blind prophet Tiresias, Corey Hawkins plays Polybus, and Logan Marshall-Green, who replaced Cosmo Jarvis after a scheduling conflict, plays the disloyal goatherd Melanthius, among other confirmed cast members.

Notably absent is Cillian Murphy, Nolan's frequent collaborator and Oppenheimer lead. Murphy addressed the absence himself in September 2025, telling Variety at the Toronto International Film Festival that he's looking forward to seeing The Odyssey "as an audience member" like everyone else.

How the Film Was Made

The Odyssey is the first narrative feature ever shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, a milestone confirmed by Universal and the Associated Press. Production ran 91 days in 2025 across six countries: Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, Scotland, and the United States, where a soundstage in Los Angeles was used for the film's only studio-built set. GQ's production feature reports that more than two million feet of IMAX film were used during the shoot, reflecting both the scale of the production and Nolan's preference for capturing effects in-camera rather than digitally.

The film carries an estimated $250 million production budget and a reported runtime of 2 hours and 52 minutes. It is rated R. IMAX 70mm tickets for select opening-weekend screenings went on sale in July 2025, a full year ahead of release, a move widely described as unprecedented for a major distributor, and several of those screenings sold out within the first 12 hours.

London Premiere and First Reactions

The world premiere took place at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square in London on July 6. Several members of the principal cast attended, walking a sandy carpet alongside a large Trojan Horse installation erected outside the venue. Nolan addressed the crowd before the screening: "You're the first audience in the world to see this film. This is the world premiere, on the beautiful 70mm film, so be kind."

First reactions from critics who attended were overwhelmingly positive. Variety's Jazz Tangcay called it "a triumphant, spectacular epic" and praised the ensemble, including Damon, Holland, Hathaway, Leguizamo, Pattinson, and Nyong'o, as delivering performances that, for some of them, may be the best of their careers. The Hollywood Reporter's Aaron Couch noted that the film includes "a fleshed-out horror sequence," a first in Nolan's career. In a Hollywood Reporter roundup of reactions, the Independent called it "Nolan's biggest film to date," crediting it with roughly three times as many large-scale set pieces as any of his previous films.

Time Out's Phil de Semlyen singled out Samantha Morton's performance as Circe, calling it "extraordinary." IndieWire's David Ehrlich described the film as a less despairing companion to Oppenheimer, writing that "the last act rewards the journey" even as he judged it too uneven to rank among Nolan's very best work. Aggregated review scores are expected to appear around July 15, once the review embargo lifts, according to industry trade reports.

The Source and What Nolan Has Adapted

The film is based on Homer's ancient Greek epic, composed around the 8th century BC. Nolan has said he drew on classicist Emily Wilson's widely read 2017 translation, though a newer translation by Daniel Mendelsohn was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2025. Nolan has cited Odysseus's intelligence and capacity for deception as the project's central interest, describing him as "an amazing strategist" and "a very wily person."

Sinon's inclusion, a figure from Virgil rather than Homer, reinforces that Nolan is adapting the wider Trojan War tradition, not just the Odyssey text itself. Christopher Nolan's producing partner and wife, Emma Thomas, is the film's producer, she has produced every one of Nolan's features going back to his 1998 debut, Following, through their company Syncopy.

The Odyssey opens in the United States and the United Kingdom on July 17, 2026.