Before The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan Almost Made This Brad Pitt Epic

The first feature film shot entirely on IMAX cameras, a costume epic with big-name stars like Matt Damon and Tom Holland, a complex work of classical literature: The Odyssey is obviously the type of movie that only someone like Christopher Nolan could make in 2026. Not only does Nolan have the skill and experience working with multiple time-frames to bring Homer’s epic to modern audiences, but he has the name and cache to get studios to back him, especially after his 2023 triumph Oppenheimer.

But Christopher Nolan wasn’t always THE Christopher Nolan, which meant that he couldn’t always do epics the way that he wanted. That was certainly the case back in the early 2000s, when Nolan almost helmed a very different movie based on Greek classics. Before helming Batman Begins, Nolan was planning to make Troy, the 2004 film starring Brad Pitt as hero Achilles.

While the idea of Nolan making a Greek epic completely tracks today, that certainly wasn’t the case back in the early 2000s. After a solid calling-card movie Following, Nolan piloted two well-received mystery films, Memento and Insomnia. Even if they had their stylistic flourishes, particularly the backwards plotting of the former, both of those movies were grounded in the present reality, and had far more in common with Raymond Chandler than Homer.

Instead, Troy went to a director more associated with big action, the German filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen, who previously helmed The NeverEnding Story and The Perfect Storm. Under Peretersen’s watch, Troy became pure Hollywood spectacle. An adaptation of The Illiad, Troy showed how an alliance between King Agamemnon (Brian Cox) of the Greeks and King Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson) of the Spartans leads to an attack on Troy, lead by Priam (Peter O’Toole). The battle builds to a face of between Achilles and Trojan warrior Hector (Eric Bana).

Clearly green lit after the success of Gladiator, Troy had a massive budget and incredible locations, shot in Malta and Moracco. But while the film earned more than double its budget, it failed to win over critics, who dismissed it as pretty but forgetable, and found Pitt particularly ill-suited to the role.

Disappointing as Troy was to most involved, things worked out well for Nolan. According to Batman Begins screenwriter David S. Goyer, “Batman was a consolation prize for [Nolan] because he had been developing Troy.” When Warner Bros. took Troy from him and gave it to Petersen, they gave Nolan Batman instead, Goyer explained.

From there, we know what happened. Batman Begins and the Dark Knight trilogy proved a more natural progression from Memento and Insomnia, and Nolan proved he could do mythic storytelling on a massive scale. The success of those films paved the way for Inception, Interstellar, and eventually Oppenheimer, cementing Nolan as one of the most compelling filmmakers working today.

Then, and only then, could Nolan mount a production as massive of The Odyssey, a movie that promises to make Troy a footnote in cinema history.

The Odyssey releases July 17, 2026.