‘The Odyssey’ Is Massive and Magnificent
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What movie news and festival lineup updates kick off the episode?
I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about a face, a fleet, a war, a man. Today, we are diving deep into Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, the movie mega event that will no doubt be the biggest film of 2026, but will it be the best? We will discuss the scale of this titanic feat, the adaptation of Homer's epic poem, the performances from one of the most loaded casts in recent movie history, why now for this story and the fate of Nolan's 13th feature film at the box office, the Academy Awards and beyond. But first, we'll talk about some movie news right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is presented by Amazon Prime. One of the best things about streaming is that you never just pick a title, you pick a feeling.
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Okay. You like that improv?
That was really good.
Give me some props. That was really good. Give me props.
It's called teamwork. It's teamwork. We made the dream work. Let's talk about some news. You know, there's a lot of news. I think most people who are coming to this episode don't care about the news. They'll tell us about the Odyssey, but some of these things matter to us. The Behemoth trailer was released. This is Tony Gilroy's new film, much discussed on our recent movie auction. And you say what?
Well, very little dialogue in this movie. Yes, I noticed that. For a Tony Gilroy movie, I was... Obviously, this is a movie about a musician or several musicians. A cellist, it appears. Gilroy has commissioned a lot of original music from many different composers. So I understand why they wanted to get the score in there. But I do come to Tony Gilroy for dialogue. And so... I couldn't tell whether this was just featuring something different about the film or hiding the ball. I realized also that half of this cast is sort of a black licorice cast for me.
Oh, no.
I know, which I didn't really think through. But once they have Will Arnett at the door, you know, doing wisecracks. I don't know. We'll see.
Will Arnett got more dialogue than Pedro Pascal in this teaser trailer. You know, it's Tony Gilroy.
I go where Tony Gilroy goes, except he does not go to Venice, but I do. That's fine.
That's really interesting about half of the cast being black licorice. I'm excited about this movie. I did think as I was watching it, I wonder how much more I would like this if it was Oscar Isaac instead of Pedro Pascal. Yeah. Because he was originally meant to be cast. But you know what? We'll talk about this movie again in one moment. I play Rocky. This trailer also premiered. This is a biopic of Sylvester Stallone in the moments when he was writing and attempting to be cast in the film Rocky. And our friend Tracy Letts is in this movie. We've been hearing about this movie for, I've been hearing about it from him for well over a year. And you say what?
I look forward to seeing it. We saw some of this at CinemaCon. And the casting of Sylvester Stallone...
matters great the movie hangs on that and it was pretty plausible to me when the actor yes anthony apolito um who you know i guess most memorably played al pacino in the paramount plus series the offer sure and so now he's pivoting from al pacino to sylvester stallone i would say different archetypes of italian american actors but i guess they're related 70s icons um you know rocky never my franchise we've talked about that before on the pod but um The film looks familiar and a bit like a ham sandwich to me. And sometimes a ham sandwich is delicious. And sometimes I'm like, ham? Couldn't this be chicken? What about turkey?
There were a couple old-fashioned movies that we were previewed at CinemaCon that are dated for the Thanksgiving to Christmas corridor. And they seem to feature, you know, white men of a certain age set in the 70s and 80s.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What movie news and festival lineup updates kick off the episode?
0:15–4:29
2
Which fall films and festival strategies are Sean and Amanda predicting?
4:29–1:07:57
3
How does Nolan turn the Trojan War victory into trauma for Odysseus?
1:07:57–1:10:50
4
How are Circe and the film's horror makeup sequences updated and staged?
1:10:50–1:15:26
5
What makes the Sirens, Scylla and the return-to-Ithaca sequences so powerful?
1:15:26–1:25:10
6
Which Oscars and box‑office outcomes are predicted for The Odyssey?
1:25:10–2:08:19
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Big Picture
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