Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey Adds Another Major Marvel Star to Its Cast

January 22, 2025, 1:40pm

Jon Bernthal is embarking on Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey. The Marvel’s Punisher star and The Bear Emmy winner has joined the cast of Nolan’s next film, a mythic action epic adaptation of Homer’s poem. Bernthal is the latest to be added to the star-studded cast that includes Matt Damon (Oppenheimer), Tom Holland (the Spider-Man films), Zendaya (Dune), Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises), Robert Pattinson (Tenet), Lupita Nyong’o (Black Panther), and Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road).

Videos by ComicBook.com

“Christopher Nolan’s next film The Odyssey is a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology,” Universal Pictures announced in December. Set for July 17, 2026, The Odyssey “brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX film screens for the first time.”

Nolan’s followup to his Best Director and Best Picture Oscar-winning Oppenheimer will reportedly begin production in February.

Homer’s Odyssey tracks Odysseus and his travels across the Mediterranean Sea in an attempt to return home to Ithaca after the decade-long Trojan War. Odysseus angers Poseidon, and is then pursued “with wrath implacable.” The epic poem features such mythical characters as Telemachus, the son of Odysseus/Ulysses and Penelope; the goddess Athena; the one-eyed giant Cyclops Polyphemus, blinded by Odysseus; the lustrous enchantress Circe; the lustful goddess Calypso; and vengeful sea god Poseidon.

Since his breakout role as Shane on The Walking Dead, which he followed with a stint as the vigilante Frank Castle on Marvel’s Daredevil and his Marvel-Netflix spinoff series The Punisher, Bernthal has appeared in films directed by Martin Scorsese (The Wolf of Wall Street), Denis Villeneuve (Sicario), Taylor Sheridan (Wind River), James Mangold (Ford v Ferrari), and Ava DuVernay (Origin). He’ll next reprise his role as Brax Wolff opposite Ben Affleck in The Accountant 2 and will return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the Marvel TV series Daredevil: Born Again as the Punisher.

Deadline first reported the news of Bernthal’s casting.