The season of the summer blockbuster is officially here, and while The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t get the ball rolling as well as Disney would have liked, Masters of the Universe is here to kick things off this weekend. One of the most anticipated movies of the summer comes this week, when Steven Spielberg officially returns to the world of sci-fi for his next epic, Disclosure Day, which stars Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor. Fans could argue for days about which summer 2026 movie is going to be the biggest, and while Spider-Man: Brand New Day may yet finish with the highest box office total, The Odyssey is guaranteed to turn heads. The new historical epic hails from Christopher Nolan, who recently swept the Oscars for his work writing and directing 2023’s Oppenheimer.
After starring in a key supporting role in Oppenheimer, Matt Damon has been promoted to the lead figure in The Odyssey, which also stars Chris Nolan newcomer Tom Holland. Between his work in The Odyssey and Brand New Day, Holland could easily add another $2 billion to his already impressive box office total. News broke earlier this week that The Odyssey has a runtime of 2:52, making it one of the longest movies of Nolan’s career, behind the three-hour epic, Oppenheimer. Further developments just yesterday revealed that the film carries a $250 million budget, which is Nolan’s most expensive film since The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. This gargantuan budget leaves The Odyssey with a break-even point of just over $500 million, but after Oppenheimer fell just short of $1 billion, there’s no reason to bet against Christopher Nolan right now.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Who Else Stars in ‘The Odyssey’?
In addition to Matt Damon and Tom Holland, who star in the father-son duo roles of Odysseus and Telemachus, Christopher Nolan has assembled one of the most impressive casts in movie history for The Odyssey. Also billed in lead roles in The Odyssey are Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Lupita Nyong’o as both Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, Zendaya as Athena, and Charlize Theron as Calypso. The star power doesn’t stop there, though, as Jon Bernthal, Mia Goth, Elliot Page, Benny Safdie, John Leguizamo, Ryan Hurst, Himesh Patel, James Remar, and Bill Irwin have all been tapped for roles in the film as well. The film is adapted from the famous fictional story by Homer.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of The Odyssey, which is coming to theaters on July 17.
