Nolan climbed inside giant Trojan horse for The Odyssey scene

John Leguizamo said Christopher Nolan climbed inside a giant Trojan horse with about 20 actors, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and an IMAX camera to shoot a pivotal scene for The Odyssey. Leguizamo said Nolan is the kind of director who “doesn't ask anything of you that he doesn't attempt himself,” a detail that fits the filmmaker’s long-running preference for practical, in-camera spectacle over digital substitution.

That approach was on display during the film’s London world premiere on July 6 at Leicester Square, where Universal unveiled a 36-foot Trojan horse that it said was an exact replica of the one built from the production blueprints. The structure weighed more than 8,800 pounds, took a 34-person crew 288 hours to assemble, and involved 45 people overall. Universal said the horse was moved in three trucks and reassembled in four parts plus a base. The premiere drew Nolan, producer Emma Thomas, Universal executive Donna Langley and much of the cast, including Matt Damon, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, Benny Safdie, Himesh Patel, Samantha Morton, Elliot Page, Travis Scott, Mia Goth and Corey Hawkins.

The promotional campaign moved to New York ahead of the July 14 premiere at AMC Lincoln Square on Broadway between West 67th and 68th streets. A Trojan horse installation was erected outside the theater, with local coverage putting it at roughly 40 feet tall and more than 8,000 pounds. The setup stretched across two blocks and included two red carpet areas, turning the Upper West Side into a temporary extension of the film’s own production design.

The scale of the rollout matches the commercial logic behind Nolan’s method. Practical spectacle gives the marketing campaign a real object to sell, not just a visual effect to describe, and it places the filmmaking process itself at the center of the event. Variety reported that The Odyssey broke BFI IMAX ticket-sales records with $1 million in first-day sales, an early sign that audiences are responding to the promise of a large-format production built around physical scale.

Homer’s poem is traditionally dated by scholars to roughly 750-650 BC, and it has already been adapted on screen in forms ranging from Giuseppe de Liguoro’s 1911 silent film to Ulysses in 1954 and the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? Nolan’s version has now joined that lineage as a prestige release built on the same premise that powered the horse itself: make the image tangible, then make the audience want to be there when it happens.