Elon Musk has claimed his Grok AI tool will create a “historically accurate” full-length adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey by the end of 2026.
Fresh off Christopher Nolan‘s film causing a sensation at the box office on its opening weekend, the tech billionaire made the promise on X today (July 22), after sharing a three-minute sequence created by the account Heavy Pulp using Grok Imagine.
The scene depicts Odysseus and the nymph Calypso in a continuous handheld shot. Check it out below.
I treat @grok @imagine like I would treat a real production from a real set.
Two locked start frames: one over Calypso’s shoulder, one over Odysseus’ shoulder.
I reuse these as the launch images for the whole conversation, so the scene’s geometry never drifts on me. pic.twitter.com/64djGoahmK
— Heavy Pulp (@heavypulp) July 21, 2026
“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,” Musk wrote.
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
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
Exactly what he considers a “historically accurate” adaptation is unclear. The Odyssey is an ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer and believed to have been composed around the eighth century BC.
Although its story takes place after the Trojan War, the poem is mythological and features gods, a cyclops, sirens, the six-headed sea monster Scylla and the goddess Circe, who transforms Odysseus’ men into pigs.
Musk’s announcement follows his repeated criticism of Nolan’s The Odyssey, which was released in cinemas last Friday (July 17) and stars Matt Damon as Odysseus.
Before the film’s release, Musk accused Nolan of being an “anti-white racist” who had lost his “integrity” by casting Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. He also supported transphobic posts about Elliot Page, after some users incorrectly claimed that the actor had been cast as Achilles. Page plays the Greek soldier Sinon.
Nolan later dismissed the pre-release backlash as “irrelevant”, explaining: “No one having [those conversations] knows what the film actually is yet.”
“What you have to do is honour the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can,” he added.
Nolan has also spoken in the past about his disdain for the encroachment of AI into the film industry, describing it as “terrifying”, and adding: “It has to be about accountability. We have to hold people accountable for what they do with the tools that they have.”
Nyong’o has defended Nolan’s approach in The Odyssey, describing the source material as a “mythological story” and saying: “Our cast is representative of the world. I’m not spending my time thinking of a defence. The criticism will exist whether I engage with it or not.”
Despite the backlash, The Odyssey earned $264million (£196million) during its opening weekend, making it the biggest live-action film of 2026 so far.
In a glowing five-star review, NME wrote: “Less a case of them not making ‘em like they used to, watching the film leaves you with a sense that this sort of thing probably won’t be made at all for too much longer – the sheer scale, ambition and weight of it seeming to belong to a different world already. It’s hard to see how cinema can get much bigger than this.”
