Elon Musk says Grok AI will make 'historically accurate' Odyssey film after Nolan's $264M opening

Musk's AI challenge

On 21 July, Elon Musk posted on X that his AI platform Grok Imagine would create a "full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer" before the end of 2026. The post, pinned to his profile the following day, included a three-minute clip generated by a follower showing a scene between Odysseus and Calypso. The clip featured an all-white cast and stilted dialogue, drawing mockery from observers. Musk's announcement came after months of attacking Christopher Nolan's blockbuster adaptation, which he accused of "pissing on Homer's grave" over its casting choices.

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.

Nolan's box office triumph

Nolan's The Odyssey, starring Matt Damon as Odysseus and Anne Hathaway as Penelope, opened worldwide on 17 July to near-universal acclaim. It earned $264 million in its opening weekend and holds a 97% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film's success directly contradicted Musk's earlier prediction that Nolan would go "broke" by embracing "woke" casting. Strong midweek performance, driven by Imax screens and a star-studded ensemble including Zendaya, kept the film at the top of the box office. The cultural impact extended beyond cinemas: 91 audiobook editions in 10 languages were downloaded for the equivalent of over 43 years of continuous listening, according to a streaming platform.

Casting controversy

Musk's ire focused on Nolan's decision to cast Black actor Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy and trans actor Elliot Page as Sinon. Musk called Nolan a "racist anti-white" and claimed the director had "lost his integrity." Nyong'o responded in May, saying, "Our cast is representative of the world. I'm not spending my time thinking of a defence." Nolan later dismissed the pre-release backlash as "irrelevant" because critics had not seen the film. Scholars noted that Homeric descriptors like "white-armed" are poetic conventions, not ethnic markers, and that the story is a myth without a claim to historical accuracy.

Our cast is representative of the world. I'm not spending my time thinking of a defence.

The Gibson proposal

In a separate exchange, Musk replied "I'm down" to a user's suggestion that he give Mel Gibson $100 million to direct an Odyssey adaptation with "painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek." The proposed budget is less than half of Nolan's reported $250 million production cost. No formal deal has been announced, and it remains unclear whether the project would proceed alongside or instead of the Grok-generated film.

AI and filmmaking

Nolan was withering about AI's role in cinema. He called the idea that AI could replace human creativity "a nonsense," adding, "I've never seen a technology that's been so successfully adopted by Wall Street and by investors and by tech companies that the public has so thoroughly rejected." Musk's AI-generated clip, with its foam earplugs and Instagram-faced Calypso, seemed to illustrate Nolan's point. The three-minute teaser, produced by an X user with Grok Imagine, depicted a scene that Rolling Stone described as "a hodgepodge of stereotypes and stilted dialogue."

The idea that it replaces human beings wholesale and human creativity, to me it's a nonsense.