The Odyssey has always been a story passed down by oral tradition. Homer may be the author, but it was told by performers to audiences over and over. Now, millennia later, that story is being told by Christopher Nolan to its biggest audience yet. Nolan’s Odyssey will be a large-scale epic that’s already sold out some theaters months before its release, but if you’re not patient enough to wait until July 2026, you can catch a sneak peek in certain movie screenings soon.
According to Variety, a nearly six-minute prologue for The Odyssey will premiere ahead of 70mm IMAX screenings of One Battle After Another and Sinners on December 12. Only 10 theaters are re-releasing those movies, but on December 19, all IMAX showings of Avatar: Fire and Ash will include the prologue as well.
A pre-release prologue is a go-to strategy for Christopher Nolan. The first five minutes of The Dark Knight were shown before I Am Legend, the first six minutes of The Dark Knight Rises were shown before screenings of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Dunkirk had a sneak peek ahead of Rogue One, and Tenet’s first scene premiered before early screenings of The Rise of Skywalker.
Many of Christopher Nolan’s movies have had theatrical prologues.
But just what will this sneak peek involve? It’s likely just the first few minutes of the actual movie, but unlike all of Nolan’s previous work, The Odyssey has an existing prologue: The Iliad, Homer’s epic depicting the decade-long siege of Troy that took Odysseus away from Ithaka in the first place. The Odyssey is the story of his equally long journey home, so it’s possible this clip will establish how he thought up the Trojan Horse and caused Troy to fall to the Greeks.
Unfortunately, if you don’t have an IMAX theater nearby, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to see this prologue. These clips are usually theatrically exclusive, so it probably won’t be released online. But if Odysseus could survive 20 years away from home, you can probably survive another few months before you catch Nolan’s next movie.
