Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Budget Is Reportedly Even Bigger Than $250 Million and It’s His Most Expensive Film Ever

Christopher Nolan has never been shy about going big, but his upcoming adaptation of ‘The Odyssey’ is operating at a scale that even his most devoted fans may not have anticipated.

According to Puck’s Matt Belloni, the budget for the film has climbed to well over $250 million, making it definitively the most expensive production of Nolan’s career.

The $250 million figure matches ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ as the largest budget Nolan has ever worked with, but the new reporting from Puck suggests the actual cost has exceeded even that benchmark. For comparison, ‘Oppenheimer’, which earned Nolan his first Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, was made on a $100 million budget and went on to gross $976 million globally.

The budget of THE ODYSSEY is “much more than $250M,” making it the most expensive film of Christopher Nolan’s career.

(via @PuckNews) pic.twitter.com/UtEEhlRwxu

— Christopher Nolan Archives (@NolanAnalyst) May 1, 2026

‘The Odyssey’ is an adaptation of Homer’s ancient epic, following Matt Damon as Odysseus on his long and perilous journey home after the Trojan War, with encounters along the way including the Cyclops Polyphemus, the Sirens, and the nymph Calypso. Anne Hathaway plays Penelope, with the ensemble also including Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron.

The film was shot entirely on IMAX 70mm cameras, making it the first Nolan production to use that format exclusively throughout, and it reportedly consumed over two million feet of film during its shoot. Principal photography took place across Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland, Western Sahara, and Malta, as well as on a studio soundstage in Los Angeles.

Nolan has acknowledged the enormous expectations surrounding the project, telling AP News, “There’s a massive amount of pressure,” and confirming that the film will be shorter than ‘Oppenheimer’ due to the physical limits of IMAX 70mm prints, which can only hold up to three hours of footage.

Universal is giving ‘The Odyssey’ the same theatrical treatment it gave ‘Oppenheimer’, with a release in the third weekend of July and an exclusive three-week IMAX window, reinforcing how seriously the studio is treating this as a major event film. The film is scheduled to open in the United States on July 17. With a budget this large and Nolan’s track record behind it, the stakes for this summer could hardly be higher.

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