Matt Damon carried the key to The Odyssey’s finale for months
Matt Damon says he prepped for The Odyssey in a way no one saw coming — and that one pivotal scene haunted him for months before cameras rolled.
Christopher Nolan 's The Odyssey is almost here, and the behind-the-scenes stories keep getting juicier. After Jon Bernthal recently talked about Nolan's strict no-phone policy on set, Matt Damon just shared a very Matt Damon bit of process: he literally carried the film 's ending around with him for months before they shot it.
Damon prepped the last scene like a daily workout
In a chat with DiscussingFilm, Damon said Nolan shot The Odyssey in chronological order — a rarity on big movies — which meant the emotional final scene would come at the end of the schedule. So he decided to live with it. Not metaphorically. On his phone.
- Damon typed out the movie 's final scene on his phone months before it filmed.
- He revisited it for roughly 30 minutes every day when he wasn't on set, building the emotion over time.
- He never brought the phone to set because, yes, Nolan really does enforce a no-phones rule.
- By the time production reached Odysseus 's long-awaited return to Ithaca, Damon had been carrying that moment around long enough that it hit like a payoff — not just for the character, but for him.
"For months and months I had typed the last scene into my phone and I just carried it around, not on set because there's no phones on set."
The performance people are talking about
Early reactions from critics have been strong for Damon, with more than a few calling his Odysseus one of the best turns of his career. The read is not 'legendary warrior' on a pedestal; it's a man coming home from the Trojan War scarred, exhausted, and painfully human. That grounded take is what a lot of reviewers say gives Nolan's myth epic its heartbeat.
Can The Odyssey out-open Oppenheimer?
Early domestic tracking has The Odyssey aiming at an $80–100 million opening weekend, with some forecasts stretching to $120 million. If that sticks, the film would outpace Oppenheimer's $82.4 million debut and become Nolan's biggest opening weekend to date.
Beyond opening weekend, signs look bullish: rave reviews out of the gate, IMAX demand being described as unprecedented, and the strongest pre-release buzz Nolan has had in years. If audiences connect with Odysseus's homecoming the way early critics have, The Odyssey could sail past Oppenheimer and mark the biggest box-office run of Nolan's career.