Nolan has a reputation for drawing ensemble casts of A-listers, but "The Odyssey" may be his biggest project yet.

Universal announced on Monday that Damon will play the film's lead hero, Odysseus, and shared a first look of the actor in his costume.

Other stars linked to the film include Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Himesh Patel, Lupita Nyong'o, Benny Safdie, Bill Irwin, Elliot Page, Jon Bernthal, John Leguizamo, Jesse Garcia, Will Yun Lee, Samantha Morton, Corey Hawkins, Nick Tarabay, Jimmy Gonzales, Maurice Compte, Rafi Gavron, Shiloh Fernandez, and Mia Goth.

Damon, Hathaway, Pattinson, Patel, Safdie, Irwin, and Elliot Page have all previously worked with Nolan.

Hathaway confirmed the casting to Women's Wear Daily in December 2024, shortly before Universal announced the film.

Holland told the "Dish" podcast in December 2024 that he's in the movie but didn't "know anything" about the plot.

Other actors, such as Bernthal, Fernandez, Yee, Garcia, Leguizamo, and Gonzales, seemingly confirmed they would be in the film by posting reports of their castings on their Instagram.

No other roles have been announced for any of the actors, but the major characters left in the story include Odysseus' son Telemachus, the beguiling witch Circe, the monstrous one-eyed cyclops known as Polyphemus, and Poseidon, the sea god.

Homer is the attributed author of two ancient Greek poems that were composed in the 8th or 7th century BC, both of which tell the story of the Trojan War.

"The Iliad" narrates the end of the war, while "The Odyssey" tells of the 10-year struggle by Odysseus to return to his island home, Ithaka.

During the journey, Odysseus and his crew fight against a man-eating cyclops, powerful giants, and sirens. They defeat witches and sea monsters, and anger Zeus and Poseidon. But Odysseus has Athena on his side, trying to help him get home.

Meanwhile, a band of suitors are trying to take over Odysseus' kingdom in Ithaca, supplanting his son Telemachus and convincing Penelope to marry one of them.

In a dramatic conclusion, Odysseus disguises himself as a beggar and sneaks back onto the island, where he observes the actions of the suitors before reclaiming his family and kingdom.

This will be Nolan's first film about Greek mythology, breaking away from his regular sci-fi and war films. Nolan will also write the script.

Nolan's "The Odyssey" will be partly filmed on the island of Favignana near Sicily, Variety reported.

Known in ancient times as Aegusa, or "goat island," it's thought to be the inspiration for the fantastical island where Odysseus lands with his crew and stops to rest, barbecue goats, and drink wine before his run-in with the Cyclops.

Shooting on the island, which is set to begin sometime in the Spring, is being handled by the Italian company Wildside, which also oversaw the production of Edward Berger's Oscar-nominated drama "Conclave" in Rome.

Per Variety, the scenes shot in Sicily are said to take up the bulk of the mythical action in the movie, while locations in the UK and Morocco are also being used.

Several filmmakers have brought Homer's work to screen over the years, including the Oscar-winning Coen brothers and Oscar-nominated German director Wolfgang Petersen.

Petersen's "Troy," which premiered in 2004 and starred Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom, was based on Homer's "The Illiad." It was the most commercially successful Homer adaptation, grossing $497 million worldwide. However, it received mixed reviews, with some criticizing it for not translating Homer's story well. The film holds a 53% Tomatometer rating on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

Pitt told The New York Times Magazine in 2019 that he was "disappointed" by the film, and the experience made him pivot toward "quality stories" for the rest of his career.

The Coen Brothers' "O Brother, Where Are Thou" and the 2004 "The Spongebob Squarepants Movie" are two other Hollywood that are movies loosely based on "The Odyssey."

Homer's work has also been adapted into multiple TV series, including 1997's "The Odyssey," which starred Christopher Lee and Vanessa Williams.

The most recent adaptation was "The Return," directed by Italian filmmaker Uberto Pasolini and starring Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus. The film, which is a retelling of the final sections of the epic poem, received positive reviews from critics but took less than $1 million worldwide.

Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer, née Puening, married the scientist in 1940, only two years before he joined the Manhattan Project.

Kitty had been married three times before, as she wed musician Frank Ramseyer in 1932 before their marriage was annulled in 1933. 

Shortly afterward, in 1934, she was involved with the Communist Party of America, and became John Dullet Jr.'s. common-law wife when they lived together in Chicago, before separating in 1936.

Kitty then married Oxford doctor Richard Stewart Harrison in 1938, but had an affair with Oppenheimer while Harrison was working in California. She divorced Harrison in 1940, and married Oppenheimer a day later. 

They remained married until Oppenheimer's death from throat cancer in 1967, and Kitty scattered his ashes into the water by the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands, where they had spent plenty of time with their children, Peter and Toni.

Kitty spent the rest of her life with Robert Serber, another physicist from the Manhattan Project, whose wife had died by suicide. Kitty died in hospital in 1972, just as the pair had set out to go sailing to Japan, the Galapagos Islands, and Tahiti.

Oppenheimer had two children with his wife, Kitty. Their oldest child, Peter, was born in Pasadena, California, in May 1941, before the family moved to Los Alamos for the Manhattan Project.

When Peter was just two months old, the Oppenheimers left him with friends Haakon and Barbara Chevalier, according to "American Prometheus." Robert said his wife was exhausted. The couple then spent two months at the family's ranch, Perro Caliente, in New Mexico.

According to the Nuclear Museum, Peter struggled with anxiety as a child and didn't have a good relationship with his mother. 

"Robert thought that, in their highly charged, passionate, falling in love, that Peter had come too soon, and that Kitty resented him for that reason," Oppenheimer's secretary, Verna Hobson, said during a 1979 interview.

When his father died in 1967, Peter moved back to the family's Perro Caliente ranch in New Mexico. He's worked as a carpenter over the years and has three children.

Toni Oppenheimer was born in 1944 and lived at Los Alamos until she was three. That's when her father became director of the Institute for Advanced Study and moved the family to Princeton, New Jersey.

As a baby, Toni lived with the Oppenheimers' friend Pat Sherr for several months. Robert visited regularly but asked if she wanted to adopt Toni, Sherr later recalled. When Sherr asked him why, he said, "Because I can't love her," adding that he wasn't "an attached kind of person." 

However, a childhood friend of Toni's described Robert as a "loving dad" in an April interview with The Winchester Star.

Toni had polio when she was young, which is largely why the family started visiting St. John in the Virgin Islands; the warmth seemed to help her condition.

Toni had a complicated relationship with her mother, largely because of Kitty's alcohol use. 

"She leaned on Toni an awful lot and it was difficult for her in that way, but she wanted only good and happiness for Toni," Hobson said of Kitty in 1979. 

Two years after Robert's death in 1967, the United Nations rejected Toni's application to become a translator. The FBI wouldn't grant her the appropriate security clearance for the job.

She struggled to cope with losing her father and her job opportunity, and after living on the island of St. John for a while, she died by suicide in January 1977, just a month after she turned 32.

Although Toni didn't have any children before her death, Peter Oppenheimer has three: Charles, Ella, and Dorothy. 

Dorothy Vanderford, who was born in 1973, is Oppenheimer's oldest grandchild. She works in the nuclear industry and has a PhD in English. 

In 2023, she spoke to KSNV about the film and said that Christopher Nolan didn't consult the family about making his movie.

After seeing the movie, she said, "There were a few things that I didn't agree with and didn't like, but overall I felt like it was a good movie."

Charles Oppenheimer was born in 1975 and has worked in software development for many years. 

The youngest sibling, Ella, keeps her life private. 

Both Dorothy and Charles took part in a lengthy interview in 2015 about their grandfather for the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

At the time, Charles said that many historians find his grandfather a mysterious figure.

"In particular, people are having a hard time pinning down who this guy was. I guess it's made it difficult to deal with for the family, for some people. Not for me," he said.

Charles has two daughters with his wife, Karen Pak Oppenheimer, which means that Oppenheimer has at least two great-grandchildren.

Both Charles and his wife are co-executive directors of the Oppenheimer Project, which honors Robert's legacy. 

In a recent essay for The New York Times, Charles wrote that nuclear war would end the world as we know it. "I'm not afraid to be the voice calling for increased unity in the world, even though my grandfather was eventually attacked for this," he wrote.  

This story was originally published in July 2023 and was updated on December 17, 2024.