Christopher Nolan fans were already convinced The Odyssey looked like a winner from the moment the trailer dropped, but Himesh Patel has said his own confidence came from a much more personal moment after filming ended.
Patel, who plays Eurylochus, Odysseus’ second-in-command, said the realization hit after a conversation with his co-star Matt Damon once production had wrapped.
“We wrapped at exactly the same time and he came into the trailer at the same time as we tried to wipe the muck off our faces, as we did at the end of every day,” Patel told comedian Romesh Ranganathan on The Romesh Ranganathan Show. “He just sort of put his arm around me and said, ‘Man, I think we’ve made a good one.'”
Patel explained that hearing that from Damon carried real weight, given how much experience he has in the business.
“And I thought, well if Matt Damon’s saying that, he’s been in quite a few good movies, he must have quite a good instinct now. He’s great writer, he’s a great film maker and a producer, so if he’s got a good instinct about this thing, maybe he can see how it will come together.”
Ranganathan then jokingly asked what Patel would have done if the Ocean’s Eleven star had instead said it “looked like they curled out another one”. Patel laughed and replied, “I probably would have had the appropriate response in opposition.”
He also joked that he would have gone home and told his wife he had “wasted six months”.
That gloomy outcome never arrived. The film went on to take more than $1 billion at the global box office in under a month after release, becoming Christopher Nolan’s highest-grossing film of all time and surpassing 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises which earned $1.085 billion worldwide.
The film’s performance has been remarkable for an adult-skewing drama that is nearly three hours long and rated R. After just three weeks of release, The Odyssey generated $429.65 million domestically and $578.8 million internationally. The film showed exceptional staying power in theaters, declining only 27 percent from its opening weekend of $124.5 million domestically in its second weekend, outperforming typical tentpoles that usually see 50 percent or greater declines.
Damon, 55, has spent close to four decades in the industry. He first appeared in 1988 in a non-speaking role in Mystic Pizza, before landing his major breakthrough nearly 10 years later with Good Will Hunting. He later became the face of major hits including The Bourne Identity and The Martian.
Patel’s route to movie stardom was much more recent. He made his feature debut in 2019 as Jack Malik in Yesterday, though plenty of viewers still remember him from the BBC soap EastEnders, where he played Tamwar Masood from 2007 to 2016 before moving into films.
He has also reflected on just how intense the reaction to Nolan’s film has been. Speaking to GQ, Patel said, “Nothing could have prepared me for the amazing response that we’ve had in every way since the movie came out; it’s been quite overwhelming,” and said he had been ‘really heartened’ on a personal level.
“I’m aware of how rare something like this is in anyone’s career, and I’m just soaking it all in as much as I can,” he added.
On the podcast, Patel also spoke about how long blocks of filming meant extended time away from home. Damon has since said the schedule forced him to break a family rule for the first time.
Back in 2012, Damon revealed to the Guardian that he and his family had a “two-week rule”, meaning they “can’t be apart as a family for longer” than that. Work on The Odyssey ended up pushing beyond it.
“There was like stretches of like three and a half weeks, and we were just away from each other,” he told NBC’s Today show. “It was hard on us, and I’m so proud of the movie, but I’m so proud of them for really encouraging me,” he added.
The production of The Odyssey proved grueling for the entire cast and crew. Principal filming took place over six months from February to August 2025 across multiple locations around the world, including Morocco, Greece, Italy, Scotland, Iceland, and Western Sahara. The film was shot entirely on 70mm IMAX cameras, marking the first time the camera technology was used for an entire feature film and the first time Homer’s epic poem was adapted for IMAX screens.