Matt Damon’s Fantasy Action Flop Finds Success on Streaming

Academy Award winner Matt Damon has been a Hollywood staple for quite some time…but not everything he leads is a winner. The Bourne and Interstellar star will reunite with acclaimed director Christopher Nolan for next year’s action fantasy epic The Odyssey, but it may surprise you to learn this is not Damon’s first foray into the genre. And his failed attempt from 2016 is now finding some surprise success on streaming.

Sporting a ponytail and wielding a bow and arrow, Matt Damon leads the charge alongside Jing Tian, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, and Andy Lau in this tale of two European mercenaries who find themselves joining forces with an army tasked with keeping the world safe from a monstrous threat.

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Directed by Zhang Yimou, who is best known for the acclaimed martial-arts-infused period dramas Hero and House of Flying Daggers, in his English-language film debut, The Great Wall was sadly met with seriously mixed reviews both in the U.S. and China (35% on Rotten Tomatoes), unceremoniously flopping at the box office after reportedly losing as much as $75 million. The Great Wall is now climbing the charts on the recently renamed HBO Max, reaching heights of #4 in the streamer’s Top 10 and trailing just behind the documentary My Mom Jayne, and the box office successes A Minecraft Movie and Sinners. You can check out the official synopsis for The Great Wall below.

When a mercenary warrior (Matt Damon) is imprisoned within the Great Wall, he discovers the mystery behind one of the greatest wonders of the world. As wave after wave of marauding beasts besiege the massive structure, his quest for fortune turns into a journey toward heroism as he joins a huge army of elite warriors to confront the unimaginable and seemingly unstoppable force.

Matt Damon Gets Another Chance at Epic Fantasy Courtesy of Christopher Nolan

Universal Pictures

Thankfully, despite the failure of The Great Wall, Matt Damon will get another chance to lead a big-budget action fantasy epic courtesy of Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan. Damon will lead The Dark Knight and Oppenheimer director’s adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek epic poem as Odysseus, the legendary Greek king of Ithaca. Unlike Damon, The Odyssey marks Nolan’s first foray into full-on fantasy, with the movie retelling the story of Odysseus’ ten-year journey home following the Trojan War, which sees the warrior king facing a cyclops, Sirens, a witch goddess, and more as he fights to be reunited with his wife and son.

Alongside Matt Damon, The Odyssey boasts one of the most stacked casts in history. Take a deep breath, because the movie stars Tom Holland (Spider-Man: No Way Home), Zendaya (Challengers), Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises), Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road), Benny Safdie (Oppenheimer), Lupita Nyong’o (Black Panther), Robert Pattinson (The Batman), Elliot Page (Inception), Mia Goth (Pearl), Corey Hawkins (Straight Outta Compton), Jon Bernthal (The Punisher), Logan Marshall-Green (Upgrade), Himesh Patel (Tenet), Samantha Morton (Minority Report), John Leguizamo (Encanto), Will Yun Lee (The Wolverine), and, believe it or not, more.

The Odyssey is now filming, and is due to land in theaters on July 17, 2026. MovieWeb recently caught up with star John Leguizamo, who revealed his passion for the Greek classics and teased Nolan’s “amazing” and “accessible” adaptation.

“I’m a big fan of, you know, Euripides, Aristophanes, all the great Greeks, and The Odyssey. And I read The Iliad, even though I couldn’t really understand The Iliad because you have to be an expert in Punic words, wars and the Peloponnesian Wars,” Leguizamo told MovieWeb. “But The Odyssey — he wrote the script. It’s an amazing script. He made it so accessible. The cast is ridiculous, you know? I mean, everybody’s a superstar there. It was exciting. Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o. It’s a crazy cast.”

The Odyssey

Release Date

July 17, 2026

Producers

Emma Thomas

You can view the original article HERE.