Pattinson is going weird again — and Holland seems thrilled
According to Empire’s set piece, Pattinson plays Antinous, the suitor pursuing Penelope and angling for power in Ithaca. In the excerpt, he describes the part as “fun,” joking through the character’s predatory stepfather vibe: “I just want to be your daddy. That’s all I want!”
That is, frankly, very on-brand for the Pattinson lane I love most: not “movie star behaves handsomely,” but “movie star finds the slithery little frequency inside the role and turns the dial up.” Pattinson himself points out that when he and Holland share the screen, he somehow ends up doing “these slithery things” — after The Lost City of Z and The Devil All the Time, The Odyssey apparently keeps that streak alive.
Holland, for his part, frames the reunion less as a stunt and more as a comfort. He told Empire that having Pattinson there felt like a “safety blanket,” and said Pattinson “brings the best out of everyone.” That matters because The Odyssey is not just another IP title to plug into the calendar. It is a massive mythic text being filtered through Nolan’s machine — scale, psychology, architecture, pressure. You want actors who can make the old canon feel newly unstable.
Nolan is still selling risk as the point
The other big thread around the film this week is Nolan’s broader argument about Hollywood caution. In comments reported by The News International and also reflected in Mint’s headline, Nolan criticized the industry’s habit of playing safe, saying audiences are “looking for something new.”
He connected that idea back to Memento, recalling how the backwards structure looked risky even to producer Emma Thomas when he first pitched it. His point is classic Nolan, but still useful: the “biggest risk,” as he put it, is playing it safe. The risk is not always the audience — sometimes it is the financiers, the studios, the intermediaries who have to be convinced before a film can reach people at all.
That lens makes The Odyssey more interesting than a simple “prestige director adapts classic story” headline. Nolan is positioning the film as another bet on audiences showing up for a bold formal swing. He also made clear he is “not making any predictions” for The Odyssey, but said that in the past he has been rewarded for having faith in the audience.
What to watch next
Empire says its full Odyssey feature includes two days on set, interviews with Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson, plus time with Nolan in post-production. The August 2026 issue is due on sale Thursday, July 2, according to the Empire excerpt.
The film is set to open in cinemas from July 17, with The News International specifying theatres and IMAX. For viewers tracking the movie, I’d keep an eye on how the marketing balances two promises: the huge mythic sweep of Homer’s world and the odd, character-level friction teased by Pattinson and Holland’s reunion. Because if Nolan’s whole pitch is “don’t play safe,” then Antinous had better be more than a costume-drama villain. He needs to crawl under the story’s skin.