The Odyssey London Premiere: Stars, Style and IMAX Spectacle
By Brendan Bishop and Anfisa Polyushkevych
Photography by Anfisa Polyushkevych
The Odyssey London premiere brought Christopher Nolan’s colossal new interpretation of Homer to Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on Monday 6 July 2026, with Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Travis Scott and a suitably cinematic gathering of gods, warriors, musicians and very expensive tailoring.
The world premiere was an appropriately grand opening for a film that has been designed not merely to fill a cinema screen, but to overwhelm it.
Nolan’s cast arrived in London following a production involving real coastlines, working ships, enormous constructed sets, thousands of performers and more IMAX film than most directors could use in several careers. The guests, fortunately, only had to cross Leicester Square.
An Epic Made on an Epic Scale
Based on Homer’s ancient account of Odysseus and his long journey home from the Trojan War, The Odyssey stars Matt Damon as the battle-weary king of Ithaca. Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, Tom Holland is their son Telemachus, Zendaya appears as Athena, Charlize Theron plays Calypso and Lupita Nyong’o takes the dual roles of Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra.
Its reported production budget was approximately $250 million. Filming lasted 91 days across Greece, Italy, Morocco, Iceland, Scotland and the United States, with the production finishing nine days ahead of its planned 100-day schedule.
The numbers resemble an inventory prepared before invading a small country. More than 5,300 costumes were created. The siege of Troy alone used approximately 2,000 extras. The production built Trojan Horses standing around 35 feet tall, used a working 115-foot wooden longship and filmed the Cyclops encounter inside a Greek cave rising roughly 95 feet from floor to ceiling.
Most significantly, The Odyssey is the first feature film photographed entirely with IMAX film cameras. Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema exposed approximately 2.1 million feet of IMAX film, using newly developed equipment that made the famously large and noisy cameras practical for intimate dialogue as well as battles, storms and mythical monsters.
Nolan has not eliminated digital effects altogether. He has simply refused to let them replace everything that could be built, sailed, burned, climbed or placed in front of a camera.
In an age when a thousand soldiers can be created by copying the same digital man until nobody is looking too closely, putting thousands of human beings into costumes almost qualifies as an act of rebellion.
The Odyssey London Premiere in Leicester Square
The world premiere took place at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square, with Nolan and producer Emma Thomas joined by an extensive cast that included Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Mia Goth, Himesh Patel, Samantha Morton, John Leguizamo, Corey Hawkins, Elliot Page, Benny Safdie and Travis Scott.
Musician and composer James Blake was among the invited guests, attending alongside Jameela Jamil.
Tom Holland, who plays Telemachus, chose restrained dark tailoring rather than attempting to compete with the couture mythology unfolding around him. James Blake appeared in formal black tie, while Travis Scott — who also appears in the film — arrived in an all-black suit and
sunglasses.
The men looked polished. The women looked as though Olympus had opened a couture department.
Zendaya Brings Schiaparelli Straight From Paris
Zendaya wore the closing look from Schiaparelli’s Autumn/Winter 2026 Haute Couture collection — a remarkable piece that had appeared on the Paris runway only hours before reaching the London carpet.
Designed by Daniel Roseberry, the white sculptural bodice was formed to resemble a classical marble torso, complete with sharply defined ribs and abdominal contours. It descended into a silver-and-white beaded fringe skirt that moved like liquid metal.
A multi-strand Chopard diamond necklace was draped across the bodice, while Zendaya’s braided hairstyle offered a subtle reference to the helmet of Athena, the goddess she plays in the film.
It was an unusually literal piece of premiere dressing, but Zendaya has long understood that if one is attending a film about Greek gods, dressing like somebody waiting for a taxi would be a wasted opportunity.
Anne Hathaway in Sky-Blue Dior
Anne Hathaway brought a very different kind of drama in an ethereal sky-blue Dior gown.
The strapless design used layers of finely pleated and ruffled fabric to create a soft, cloud-like silhouette, complemented by Bvlgari jewellery and a classic red lip. The colour was particularly effective against the neutral premiere carpet and the black tailoring worn by much of the cast.
Hathaway had first noticed the Dior design months earlier while considering clothes for The Devil Wears Prada 2 publicity. Knowing that she would be further into her pregnancy by the time The Odyssey premiered, she asked the house to hold it for her. The result was less conventional maternity dressing than full-scale cinematic entrance.
Charlize Theron’s Givenchy Theatre
Charlize Theron, who plays Calypso, wore a black velvet Givenchy gown designed by Sarah Burton.
The halterneck dress featured a high thigh slit and a dramatic open back finished with a cascading bow detail. It was paired with oversized white leather opera gloves and sleeves, long diamond earrings, sleek side-parted hair and a brilliant red lip.
The white gloves divided fashion commentators, which means they performed precisely the function for which red-carpet clothes now exist: everyone noticed them, everyone discussed them and nobody confused the outfit with anything worn by anybody else.
Theron later changed into a red version of the Givenchy design for the after-party, replacing the white gloves with black and allowing the bow-backed construction of the dress to take centre stage.
Lupita Nyong’o in Liquid Silver
Lupita Nyong’o arrived in a silver Christian Cowan gown from the designer’s Autumn 2026 collection.
The sleeveless column dress used a shimmering, mesh-like material with dramatic side cut-outs, giving it the appearance of poured silver. Against Nyong’o’s close-cropped natural hair and restrained jewellery, the effect was commanding without relying upon the usual toga references.
As the film’s Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Nyong’o might reasonably have been expected to arrive wearing something capable of launching a thousand ships. Christian Cowan instead produced something that looked capable of stopping traffic in Leicester Square, which was probably more useful on the evening.
From Leicester Square to Oswald’s
After the screening, the celebrations moved to Oswald’s, the private members’ club on Albemarle Street in Mayfair.
Zendaya, Tom Holland, Matt Damon, Mia Goth and Charlize Theron were among the guests photographed arriving at the after-party. Theron’s change from black velvet to red Givenchy provided a second red-carpet moment, although this time without an actual red carpet.
There were no credible reports of arguments, dramatic exits or after-party incidents. The London premiere produced no scandal more serious than disagreement over a pair of very large white gloves.
The film itself has been considerably more contentious.
Why Does Ancient Greece Sound So Modern?
Some early viewers and trailer commentators objected to Nolan’s use of contemporary American speech, including casual words such as “dad”, rather than the formal British pronunciation traditionally associated with historical and biblical epics.
That convention has been with cinema for decades. Romans, Greeks and Egyptians routinely speak polished English, while kings use Received Pronunciation and villains are permitted something faintly European.
None of it is remotely authentic. The inhabitants of Homer’s world did not speak like members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, but audiences have been trained to accept RP as the official voice of antiquity.
Nolan deliberately rejected it. He said the decision to use modern English was a “no-brainer”, explaining that he wanted language carrying emotional rather than intellectual meaning. His intention was to remove the glass cabinet surrounding the poem and allow its family conflicts, rivalries and acts of violence to feel immediate.
Whether Telemachus saying “dad” makes Homer more accessible or merely makes Ithaca sound unexpectedly American will depend upon the viewer.
It is at least a conscious decision rather than an accident — and a reminder that nobody in an English-language version of The Odyssey is speaking the correct language anyway.
Is This the Last Film of Its Kind?
The physical scale of the production prompted Matt Damon to wonder whether The Odyssey might be the last film ever made in this manner: an international epic built around film cameras, real locations, enormous sets and armies of actual people.
Nolan rejected that suggestion as defeatist.
His argument is not that making films this way is easy. It is that difficulty has not made them impossible. Digital crowds, virtual sets and computer-generated landscapes are more convenient, but convenience is not the same thing as inevitability.
Films on the scale of Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra or The Lord of the Rings were always difficult. That was why they looked extraordinary.
The Odyssey required more will, more labour and more logistical risk than constructing the same world inside a computer. Nolan’s position is that other filmmakers can still make the same choice when the story, the audience and the studio justify it.
The question is whether anybody else will be granted $250 million and sufficient freedom to prove him right.
An Ancient Story Returns to the Big Screen
The Odyssey opens in UK cinemas on 17 July 2026, with selected venues presenting it from IMAX 70mm film.
Its London premiere offered everything expected of a major cinematic launch: formidable stars, couture delivered almost directly from Paris, a discreet Mayfair after-party and enough diamonds to ransom a minor Greek kingdom.
Yet the most compelling spectacle remains the film itself.
Nolan has taken one of civilisation’s oldest surviving stories and made it using methods that modern Hollywood increasingly considers impractical. Real places have replaced digital landscapes. Thousands of performers have replaced copied figures. Celluloid has replaced a purely electronic image.
The Odyssey may not be the last epic made this way.
But it has already reminded the industry what it risks losing if nobody bothers to try again.
Further Reading
Riviera Ready Magazine — Cannes 2026: Where Did Hollywood Go — and Does Cannes Still Matter?
Riviera Ready Magazine — Cannes 2026: Cinema, Commerce and Controlled Chaos on the Croisette
Universal Pictures — The Odyssey Official Website
IMAX — The Odyssey in IMAX 70mm Film
Associated Press — The Odyssey by the Numbers
Vogue — Zendaya’s Schiaparelli Couture Look at The Odyssey London Premiere