It ultimately never happened, but Christopher Nolan was once attached to direct Troy, the 2004 sword-and-sandals epic which adapted The Odyssey's 'prequel' The Iliad.
While he went on to direct Batman Begins and kickstart a Hollywood career that included the likes of Inception, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer, Nolan clearly kept one idea in his back pocket from his dalliances with Troy when it came time to direct The Odyssey.
"When I was briefly attached to direct Troy, I did a lot of thinking about the Trojan Horse and how I would portray that and make it credible," Nolan explained to The Independent. "I’ve had an image of that horse sinking into the sand in my head for 20 years."
Traditionally, the Trojan Horse – a horse-shaped 'gift' used to trick the people of Troy into letting soldiers into their walls – is depicted as a far more ramshackle design, with loose fragments of Odysseus' vessel used in its construction.
In The Odyssey, as early marketing and trailers have teased, the Trojan Horse is a sleek, powerful creation and is seen (as Nolan's original vision intended) with its hind legs sinking into the sand.
A lesson, then, that there will always be a time to deploy a good idea. Sometimes, you just need hundreds of millions of dollars and a best-in-class crew to see out your vision.
The Odyssey, starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, and Zendaya, charts Odysseus' decades-long journey home to Ithaca.
For more on the making of the film, read our interview with Matt Damon on filming the Trojan Horse scene, plus Christopher Nolan reveals why the characters in Ancient Greece have American accents.
