The Odyssey is shaping up to be one of the biggest movies of 2026, and one of the biggest of Matt Damon‘s career, too. Christopher Nolan is following up his Oscar-winning Oppenheimer with an epic new take on Homer’s Greek classic. Damon will star as Odysseus, the Trojan War hero who faces one hell of a journey home, with a stacked ensemble cast around him, including Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, and many more.
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Damon is no stranger to Nolan movies, having appeared in Interstellar and Oppenheimer, but this will be his first time leading one of them, and that could make it his biggest movie as the star in over a decade, and perhaps of all time. Right now, his highest-grossing movie as lead actor is The Martian, which pulled in $653 million at the box office. The only movie of his that’s bigger (not including cameos) is actually Oppenheimer, with $976m, but it was a supporting role [via The Numbers].
Nolan is the rare director whose name alone makes movies a must-see cinematic event, and the scale of The Odyssey, its summer release window, and starry cast all suggest it’s going to be huge, quite possibly in a similar ballpark to Oppenheimer. Even if it doesn’t get close to $1 billion, it should still outgross The Martian, especially given IMAX 70mm screenings were selling out one year in advance of its release. It probably won’t be the highest-grossing movie of 2026 – not when the likes of Avengers: Doomsday, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and Toy Story 5 exist – but it’d be a surprise to see it fall short of the $653m it needs to break Damon’s record.
The Odyssey Could Also Put Matt Damon Back In Oscars Contention
Damon hasn’t been at the top of the box office in some time as the star of a movie. Oppenheimer aside, his only major hit after The Martian was 2016’s Jason Bourne, which made $416m, though Ford v. Ferrari pulled in a respectable $224m. This decade, his only other movie to make more than $100m at the box office was the animated IF, and while there’s so much more to an actor’s work than how much money a movie makes, The Odyssey will nonetheless be a massive return to form in that regard.
It could, and perhaps should, also be a return to awards contention for Damon. He has a long history at the Oscars, having won Best Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting (along with Ben Affleck) back in 1998, and he was nominated for Best Actor then as well. Since then, he’s picked up two more acting nods – Best Supporting Actor for Invictus, and Best Actor for… The Martian. That was the last time he received an acting Oscar nomination, though he was a Best Picture nominee for Manchester by the Sea as a producer. He did also pick up a Golden Globe nod for Air, and a SAG nomination as part of Oppenheimer‘s cast, but further Academy Awards recognition has alluded him.
Although The Odyssey is a big genre movie, which isn’t always something the Academy goes for in terms of performances, there’s enough of a track record to peg Damon as an early contender: he’ll be the very center of one of the most talked about movies of 2026, and the last person to star in a Nolan movie ended up winning Best Actor (Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer, while Robert Downey Jr. picked up the Supporting prize as well).
There’ll be plenty of competition – Tom Cruise is also seemingly gunning to finally win his first acting Oscar, starring in an untitled Alejandro G. Iñárritu film – but if The Odyssey lands close to expectations, Damon will at the very least be in the conversation, alongside dominating the box office, completing his own long journey back to that point.
The Odyssey will be released in theaters on July 17, 2026.
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