Matt Damon reveals his biggest regret: the film even his daughter hated
Matt Damon saw The Great Wall was in trouble before it even opened — but the most brutal review came from his daughter. Now he’s revealing the cutting verdict that stung more than the box office.
Matt Damon is riding a wave of early love for Christopher Nolan 's The Odyssey, but even a potential career high does not protect you from the toughest critic in the house: your own kid. And yes, she still brings up The Great Wall.
At home, 'The Great Wall' is just 'The Wall'
On Marc Maron's WTF podcast, Damon said his daughter has a running bit where she skips the movies she suspects are actually good and instead zeroes in on the ones that face-plant. Exhibit A: 2016's The Great Wall, which she rebranded as The Wall because, in her words, there was nothing great about it.
'She just likes giving me shit. She's playfully hard on me. She doesn't go to see my movies on purpose, the ones she thinks might be good. She crushes me on the ones that don't work.'
He knew 'The Great Wall' was in trouble while making it
Damon was blunt about when his stomach dropped: during production. He says director Zhang Yimou was squeezed by Hollywood financiers, and somewhere in that tug-of-war the movie lost its shape. Damon could feel the pieces stop fitting together, and he calls the grind of finishing something you suspect will not work one of the worst creative feelings you can have on a set.
The Great Wall went on to earn north of $330 million worldwide against a reported $150 million budget. On paper that sounds solid; in reality, brutal reviews and hefty costs turned it into a disappointment.
From that mess to 'The Odyssey' glow-up
Cut to now: Damon is front and center in Nolan's The Odyssey as Odysseus, the war-battered king clawing his way home after the fall of Troy. The film had its world premiere in London earlier this month and hits theaters July 17, 2026. Early reactions are calling his performance one of the strongest of his career, and the awards chatter has already nudged him into the Best Actor conversation.
This one did not come easy. Damon has called The Odyssey the most demanding shoot he has ever done. Nolan kept things practical and physical, dragging the production across multiple countries and asking Damon to inhabit a beat-up, relentless Odysseus without much movie-magic cushioning.
In a bit of candid shop talk, Damon also said he only landed the role after Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, and Leonardo DiCaprio passed, noting that Nolan typically pulls from a familiar bench: Christian, Tom Hardy, Leo, Matthew, JD, Rob, Hugh Jackman, and so on. However the dominoes fell, they ended with Damon.
For the London premiere on July 7, Damon made a rare full-family red-carpet appearance with wife Luciana Barroso and all four of their daughters. If the buzz holds, this might be the first time in a while his in-house critic runs out of jokes.