23 Years Ago, Christopher Nolan Almost Directed The Odyssey’s Prequel

Christopher Nolan’s new adaptation of The Odyssey is already shaping up to be the biggest cinematic release of the summer, and just over two decades ago, a movie which effectively serves as its prequel was in a similar position. Remarkably, Nolan revealed at the end of 2025 that he was in line to direct the movie in question.

Of course, things turned out differently, and The Odyssey is the first ancient epic of the director’s storied career. Still, there are clear overlaps between the 2004 release Troy, which Wolfgang Peterson ended up directing instead of Nolan, and his latest big-budget blockbuster.

Peterson’s movie is well worth watching before The Odyssey, not least because it familiarizes viewers with the myth cycle it draws on. Now that Nolan has made us aware of his history with the earlier project, his decision to tell the story of Odysseus on the big screen makes even more sense.

It goes without saying that Troy would look very different if it were a Christopher Nolan movie. Yet, perhaps it wasn’t the right moment of the director’s career for him to take on a production of such enormous scope. Nolan’s work on the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer have undoubtedly informed his approach to The Odyssey.

Christopher Nolan Was Originally Signed On To Direct Troy In 2003

Credit: Everett Collection

In an interview with Empire magazine back in November 2025, Christopher Nolan explained that he was originally the director of Troy before Wolfgang Peterson took on the role. Peterson had developed the movie in the first place, before leaving Warner Bros. to hire a director while he worked on a superhero project of his own.

The studio subsequently hired Nolan to helm Troy in early 2003, before Peterson’s other production fell through, and he returned to direct the ancient epic himself. Nolan described the process in the following terms:

“Wolfgang had developed it, and so when the studio decided not to proceed with his superhero movie, he wanted it back. Fair enough. But at the end of the day, it was a world that I was very interested to explore. So it’s been at the back of my mind for a very long time. Certain images, particularly. How I wanted to handle the Trojan horse, things like that.“

It’s no coincidence, then, that The Odyssey features a prologue concerning the legendary horse that Odysseus designed for the Greeks to infiltrate and sack the city of Troy. Apparently, Christopher Nolan had been planning this sequence for over 20 years. Many of the characters in his new movie appeared in Troy, too, including its eponymous hero.

In the 2004 movie, it was Sean Bean who played the mythical hero Matt Damon portrays in The Odyssey. Meanwhile, Brendan Gleeson played the legendary King of Sparta Menelaus, who’s portrayed by Jon Bernthal in Nolan’s movie, and Brian Cox played his brother Agamemnon, a role that Benny Safdie has now assumed.

Troy Is Effectively A Prequel To The Odyssey

It isn’t just characters and a wooden horse that Troy and The Odyssey share. The plots of the two movies are part of the same mythical saga that’s foundational to European literature. The Trojan Cycle follows the entire story of a legendary war between Sparta and Troy, as well as its aftermath, and the fates of its various protagonists.

Although various Ancient Greek epics were written in this myth cycle, the two that have survived are the Iliad and the Odyssey, both of which are attributed to the poet Homer. The Iliad precedes the Odyssey in chronological terms, and serves as the bulk of the plot for the movie Troy.

In this sense, the film is essentially a prequel to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. It might feature different actors, and a different visual style, but there’s a single narrative thread running through both movies, which Nolan’s initial involvement in Troy serves to underscore. If Nolan wanted to, he could also make his own sequel to The Odyssey, based on Homer’s Iliad.

Unless that happens, Troy will continue to be the definitive cinematic rendering of the earliest poem in Western literature to have reached modern audiences. Nevertheless, The Odyssey can now lay claim to cinema’s defining Trojan horse sequence.