Elon Musk says he’ll beat Hollywood at its own game, pledging that his artificial intelligence venture will produce a full-length film of Homer’s “The Odyssey” by year’s end, one he insists will stay faithful to the ancient text in a way Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation has not.
Musk, believed to be the first trillionaire in modern history, unveiled the project Tuesday evening on X, posting AI-generated footage from Grok Imagine depicting a scene from the epic poem.
“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,” he wrote, offering no further details on production, casting or distribution.
In a follow-up post, Musk said he was “down” with a fan’s pitch to instead hand the project to actor and director Mel Gibson, backed by $100 million, to produce “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 announcement is the latest salvo in Musk’s long-running feud with Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” a Matt Damon-led adaptation Musk has criticized repeatedly over its casting choices.
In January, Musk wrote that “Chris Nolan lost his integrity,” responding to a post that called the film “an insult to the author” over the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy.
In May, after conservative commentator Matt Walsh suggested Nolan cast Nyong’o only to avoid being labeled “racist,” Musk replied with a single word: “True.”
Musk’s criticism hasn’t dented the film’s commercial performance, however. The R-rated, three-hour epic pulled in a $120 million opening weekend, according to Breitbart News, far exceeding pre-release industry projections of $80 million to $90 million.