Elon Musk has announced that his artificial intelligence platform Grok Imagine will create and deliver its own adaptation of Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, before the end of 2026.
The trillionaire businessman made the vow after Christopher Nolan’s Matt Damon-led epic soared to box office success in its opening week in cinemas.
Taking to X, Mr Musk said: “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.”
The post was accompanied by a three-minute AI-generated clip produced by another user on the platform, depicting a scene between Odysseus and the nymph Calypso.
Mr Musk provided no specifics on how a text-to-video tool would achieve feature length, nor any indication of a screenplay or production timeline beyond a December deadline.
He also backed a separate proposal on X to give filmmaker Mel Gibson $100 million to shoot his own version, responding simply: “I’m down.”
The announcement marks the latest development in a campaign Mr Musk has waged against Mr Nolan’s film since January, when rumours first emerged that Lupita Nyong’o had been cast as Helen of Troy.
At the time, the Tesla chief branded the decision “an insult” to Homer’s depiction of the character, later writing that Mr Nolan “has lost his integrity” and calling the director “an anti-White racist.”
In May, Mr Musk endorsed a post by Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh attacking Ms Nyong’o’s involvement, commenting: “Absolutely true. Such hypocrisy in Hollywood.”
He reacted with similar hostility to reports that trans actor Elliot Page had been cast as Achilles, describing it as “one of the dumbest and most twisted things I’ve ever heard.”
The Umbrella Academy star does not, in fact, portray Achilles in the finished film, instead taking on the role of Sinon, a Greek soldier drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid.
Despite Mr Musk’s sustained assault, Mr Nolan’s film has proved impervious at the box office
The Odyssey amassed $264.1 million worldwide during its opening weekend, with $124.5 million from 3,919 domestic screens and $139.6 million across 73 international territories.
That figure surpasses The Dark Knight Rises’ $249 million global launch in 2012, making it the largest worldwide debut of Mr Nolan’s career.
Domestically, it ranks as the third-highest opening of 2026, trailing only Toy Story 5 and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, whilst claiming the year’s biggest live-action launch and Universal’s highest-ever R-rated opening weekend.
Audiences awarded the film an A CinemaScore, and it holds a 95 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
More than half of its domestic takings came from premium large-format screens, with Imax alone contributing $51.8 million.
Mr Nolan himself has been dismissive of the historical accuracy row. “These conversations that happen before people see the film – they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet,” the director said.
He was equally scathing about artificial intelligence’s potential to supplant human filmmaking.
“The idea that it replaces human beings wholesale and human creativity, to me it’s a nonsense,” Mr Nolan previously said.
“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.”
Ms Nyong’o, for her part, offered a measured response to her right-wing critics in May.
“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,” she said.
