‘The Odyssey’ illegally viewed more than three million times on X
A pirated version of Christopher Nolan’s box office smash The Odyssey was viewed more than three million times on X over the weekend, before it was removed.
The post of the leaked film went viral after an account linked it and said in a post, “Someone uploaded The Odyssey full movie on X. Can you believe it?”, which led to it being viewed millions of times before the account was ultimately suspended.
Aside from obviously being illegal, it also goes against Nolan’s vision, who has gone to such lengths to create a premiere cinematic experience for the movie, which was shot entirely on IMAX cameras for 70mm film.
However, it remains the case that the Matt Damon-fronted retelling of the classic Greek epic would have not pulled the same punch on X as it would via a cinema screen.
As such, despite the huge number of views that the pirated version of the film generated, it has not dented its massive box office standing, having grossed $640 million over the course of its first two weekends, making it one of the biggest movies of the year so far.
Universal responded to the pirated version of the film being circulated online by saying in a statement (via The Guardian): “We became aware of the unauthorized posting of the film and immediately initiated takedown protocols. We take copyright infringement seriously and will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights.”
However, this is not the first brush with controversy that The Odyssey has experienced regarding X, as Elon Musk claimed last week that he would get the social media platform’s AI tool, Grok, to recreate a “historically accurate” take on the Homer literary tale before the end of the year.
Saying previously that “Chris Nolan is an anti-White racist” for casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, he reposted another X user’s AI-generated trailer for The Odyssey while writing, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
Unsurprisingly, this created a widespread amount of backlash, with actor Colman Domingo hitting back at the CEO by saying during his opening monologue while standing in on Jimmy Kimmel Live!: “Now Elon Musk is planning to create what he calls a ‘historically accurate’ version of The Odyssey, using his Grok AI. And by ‘historically accurate’, he means whiter than Christmas at Cracker Barrel.”
Domingo added, “Of course, this is all because Elon and his Musketeers are upset over the diversity casting of The Odyssey. And I don’t want to get technical here, but you can’t make a historically accurate version of something that is totally made the fuck up.”
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