If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, people are really, really loving Christopher Nolan this week. With his latest film, The Odyssey, now in theaters, multiple production houses have teamed up to make, wait for it, The Odyssey, but as a TV show. What a great idea!
Tentatively titled Odysseus, after the story’s main character, the show will be a joint production between the Greek distributor Tanweer, a U.S. company called Tectonic, and a U.S.-Armenian company called USATV. Karl Gajdusek, who was a showrunner of the first season of Stranger Things, will showrun here, and it’ll be directed by Roel Reiné, who did episodes of Halo and Wu Assassins. So what’s different besides the format? Well, it seems, a lot. Deadline, which broke the news, was told this take on The Odyssey is “visceral, and muscular—the real Bronze Age world of blood, ships, betrayal, and characters trying to survive the era that inspired Homer’s epic. The emphasis on real history lets the story collide with the wider convulsions of the age leading up to the Bronze Age collapse breaking the known world apart into legend.” Oh. So. The realistic version of The Odyssey? Got it. “There’s something huge about taking on this epic story in the most grounded and realpolitik way we can,” Gajdusek said. “The mythical stations of Odysseus’s journey are beautifully rendered by Homer as metaphorical journeys into self, but there’s also a real under all that. Choices. Lives and loves lost and saved. And for us to set out to tell that real, necessarily sweeping away all adornment, is thrilling. We get to take the audience backstage, meet the Bronze Age flesh and blood characters that birthed the spectacle, and live with their true story.”
