Matt Damon told Ben Affleck before his wife that he’d landed ‘The Odyssey’
Matt Damon has revealed that Ben Affleck was the first person to find out he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.
The new epic, which arrived in cinemas worldwide on July 17th, stars Damon as Odysseus, leading an all-star cast featuring Tom Holland, Himesh Patel, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, Travis Scott, Anne Hathaway, and Lupita Nyong’o.
Damon, who has previously worked with Nolan on Oppenheimer and Interstellar, was hand-picked by the British director for the starring role in his latest blockbuster.
Now, he’s shared on 100 Questions with Tom Simons, that he did initially try to call his wife, Luciano Barroso, who he married in 2005, but she was occupied. Rather than wait, Damon instead contacted his longtime collaborator Affleck.
“So, I immediately called my wife who was on a Zoom, and so she couldn’t pick up and I called Ben Affleck,” he recalled.
Affleck “freaked out” upon hearing the news, with Damon adding, “I was on the phone with him for about a half an hour.”
Before Damon could contact Barroso to let her know the good news, Affleck had already told her. He explained, “They were at the office in LA and then I hung up with him and a minute later my wife texted, like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me first?’ Ben had run into her office to tell her.”
Due to the scale and finances involved in The Odyssey, the set was kept very secretive, but an exception was made to allow Affleck to make a visit with his children.
In January, he shared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, “I’m a huge fan of Chris. It’s one of those things where my kids never want to come to the set when I’m working. ‘Hey, you guys, we’re doing a thing on the set,’ and they’re like, ‘No, I got school.’”
The Odyssey is currently on track to become the biggest film of 2026, generating $264 million in sales during its opening weekend across the globe.
The United States made up for $124.5 million of the total, with only Toy Story 5 and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie having bigger starts at the box office in 2026.
Universal had previously aimed for a $100 million opening weekend in the US, which was surpassed with ease by The Odyssey.
In a five-star review, Far Out wrote of Nolan’s latest picture, “The Odyssey is the film event of the year because it realises Nolan’s ambition of making cinema that needs to be experienced, and not just consumed. This is a story that can’t exactly be ‘spoiled’, but the visualisation, thematic analysis, and emotional calculations inherent to the filmmaker’s interpretation justify another retelling.”
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