What to Watch After The Odyssey: Every Movie and Show Worth Your Time

So you've seen The Odyssey. Maybe twice, if you sprang for the IMAX ticket both times. Now you're standing in the wreckage of a three-hour epic wondering what could possibly follow it.

Good news: Homer's story has been adapted, remixed, and raided for parts for over a century, and a surprising amount of it is streaming right now. This guide covers the whole map, from the quiet 2024 drama that tells the half of the story Nolan compresses, to the Netflix series that got killed after one season and deserved better, to the Coen brothers turning Odysseus into a Depression-era chain gang escapee.

Quick context if you somehow got here without seeing it: Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opened July 17 with Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, and Zendaya as Athena. It pulled in $124.5 million domestically its first weekend, the biggest opening of Nolan's career, and its 90s-range Rotten Tomatoes score is his best ever. It's still theaters-only, and no streaming date has been announced. So while you wait for the rewatch, here's the itinerary.

• The Return (Paramount+, Hulu) is the closest companion piece: Ralph Fiennes as Odysseus, covering only the Ithaca homecoming.
• Troy is the prequel story, and its director's cut is back in theaters right now.
• The 1997 Odyssey miniseries streams free on Plex and The Roku Channel.
• On TV: Kaos and Blood of Zeus on Netflix, Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney+ with season 3 landing November 20.
• Nolan's film has no announced streaming date, so don't wait around for it.

The Return (2024): The Other Half of the Story

Start here. Uberto Pasolini's The Return covers only the final stretch of Homer's poem, the part where Odysseus washes up on Ithaca after twenty years and finds his home overrun with suitors. No Cyclops, no Sirens, no gods at all. Just Ralph Fiennes as a hollowed-out Odysseus and Juliette Binoche as a Penelope who has been grieving so long she barely knows how to stop.

Where Nolan gives you spectacle, Pasolini gives you the hangover. His Odysseus is a man wrecked by war who isn't sure he deserves to come home, which makes the bow-and-axes finale hit like a slow-motion gut punch. Watching it right after Nolan's version is genuinely fascinating, because the two films disagree about almost everything except the ending.

Fiennes and Binoche hadn't shared the screen since The English Patient in 1996, and that history does a lot of quiet work here.

Where to watch: Streaming on Paramount+ and Hulu, or rent it on Prime Video and Apple TV.

The Odyssey (1997): The Miniseries That Goes Full Monster

Before Nolan, the definitive screen version was a two-part NBC miniseries directed by Andrei Konchalovsky and produced by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, with a then-massive $40 million budget. Armand Assante plays Odysseus, and the supporting cast is a 90s fever dream: Isabella Rossellini as Athena, Bernadette Peters as Circe, Vanessa Williams as Calypso, and Christopher Lee as the blind seer Tiresias.

It's pure 90s event television, practical effects and all, and it commits to every mythological beat Homer wrote. The Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the descent into the Underworld, all of it. Konchalovsky won the Emmy for directing it. Is some of it cheesy by 2026 standards? Honestly, yes. Is that part of the charm? Also yes.

At just under three hours total, it's a one-night watch, and it's the fastest way to see which choices Nolan made versus what a more literal adaptation looks like.

Where to watch: Free with ads on Plex and The Roku Channel, or on Prime Video.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000): The Odyssey With Banjos

The Coen brothers' Depression-era comedy opens with a credit reading "Based upon 'The Odyssey' by Homer," and they meant it. George Clooney's fast-talking escaped convict is literally named Ulysses Everett McGill. He's trying to get home to his wife Penny before she remarries. Along the way he meets a blind prophet, three singing Sirens doing laundry in a river, and a one-eyed Bible salesman played by John Goodman who is very much the Cyclops.

It's also one of the funniest movies the Coens ever made, with a T Bone Burnett soundtrack that won the Grammy for Album of the Year and briefly made bluegrass a national obsession. If Nolan's film left you wanting the same skeleton with completely different flesh on it, this is the pick.

Where to watch: Streaming on the Criterion Channel, or rent it on Prime Video and Apple TV.

Troy (2004): The Prequel, Back in Theaters

Wolfgang Petersen's Troy is the war Odysseus spends Nolan's whole movie trying to leave behind. Adapted loosely from The Iliad, it's built around Brad Pitt's Achilles and Eric Bana's Hector, with Sean Bean playing a sly, likable Odysseus who dreams up the Trojan Horse. Peter O'Toole's scene begging Achilles for his son's body is still the best thing in it.

Here's the timely part: Warner Bros. put the director's cut back in theaters on July 3 to ride the Homer wave, so depending on your local listings you can watch the fall of Troy and the journey home as an accidental double feature on the big screen. The director's cut adds about 30 minutes and a harder edge, and it's the version worth seeking out.

Fair warning that Troy cuts the gods entirely and rearranges some famous fates. Purists grumble. It's still the biggest-scale Trojan War ever filmed.

Where to watch: Streaming on Philo and AMC+, free with ads on YouTube, or rent it on Apple TV and Fandango at Home. Director's cut playing in select AMC theaters.

Kaos (2024): The One-Season Wonder About Paranoid Gods

Now for the TV side. Kaos drops Greek mythology into the present day, with Jeff Goldblum playing Zeus as a tracksuited narcissist who spirals after spotting a single wrinkle on his forehead. David Thewlis runs the Underworld like a failing bureaucracy. Prometheus narrates from the rock where he's chained. It's weird, mean, and frequently brilliant.

Netflix canceled it after one season despite strong reviews, and the fan campaign to save it went nowhere. That stings, but the eight episodes hold up on their own, and creator Charlie Covell (The End of the F*ing World) lands enough of the arc that it doesn't feel like a cliffhanger robbery. If your favorite part of The Odyssey was watching gods treat mortals like board game pieces, this is your show.

Where to watch: Netflix, one season of eight episodes.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Family-Friendly Entry Point

If Nolan's R-rated take sent a teenager in your house down a Greek mythology rabbit hole, Disney+'s Percy Jackson and the Olympians is the handoff. Walker Scobell plays Rick Riordan's demigod hero, and the show has quietly become the model for how to adapt a beloved book series after the 2010 movie botched it.

Two seasons are streaming now, and the timing works out nicely: season 3, adapting The Titan's Curse, arrives November 20, 2026. Scobell has called it the most book-accurate season yet, and it's reportedly the darkest. Season 2's finale already teed up Thalia's return, so there's real momentum heading in.

The monsters overlap with Homer's constantly, by the way. Percy fights a Cyclops in season 2. Circe, the Sirens, and the lotus-eaters all show up across the series in modernized form.

Where to watch: Disney+, seasons 1 and 2 now, season 3 on November 20.

Blood of Zeus (2020-2025): The Complete Animated Saga

Blood of Zeus is the rare Netflix series that got to finish its story. The adult animated show from Powerhouse Animation (the Castlevania studio) follows Heron, a mortal who discovers he's a son of Zeus, and escalates over three seasons into a full war between Olympians and Titans. The final season landed in May 2025, and both earlier seasons sit at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The action animation is genuinely spectacular, the kind of god-scale combat live action can't afford, and at 24 episodes total it's a satisfying complete binge rather than an open-ended commitment. Alfred Molina voicing Cronus in the final season is the cherry on top.

Where to watch: Netflix, all three seasons.

The Northman (2022): Same Journey, Different Mythology

Robert Eggers' Viking epic isn't Greek, but it scratches the exact same itch: a mythic hero's journey told by a director obsessed with authenticity, built around vengeance, prophecy, and a man clawing his way back to reclaim what's his. Alexander Skarsgård plays Amleth, the exiled prince whose legend later inspired Hamlet, and the film treats Norse magic the way Nolan treats Homer's monsters, as something real to the people living it.

It flopped in theaters and found its audience at home, which makes it an honorary member of the back-catalog club. The valkyrie ride alone is worth the watch.

Where to watch: Netflix (it joined the service in December 2025), or rent it on Prime Video and Apple TV.

Quick Hits for Completists

A few more stops if you're going full scholar mode. Ulysses (1954) is the Kirk Douglas version, a Technicolor sword-and-sandal take that compresses the whole poem into 104 minutes; it periodically surfaces on free ad-supported platforms, so check before renting. Clash of the Titans (1981) is the Perseus myth with Ray Harryhausen's legendary stop-motion creatures, available to rent on digital platforms. Disney's animated Hercules (1997) is on Disney+ and remains the funniest thing ever made about Greek gods. And 2001: A Space Odyssey borrowed Homer's title for a reason; Kubrick's film is the journey-home structure launched into deep space.

Where to Stream Everything: The Cheat Sheet

Streaming availability verified July 23, 2026. These things move, so a quick double-check never hurts.

Is Nolan's The Odyssey Streaming Anywhere Yet?

No. The Odyssey is exclusively in theaters, and Universal has not announced a digital or streaming release date. Given the box office run it's on, expect it to stay on the big screen for a while. Nolan has been vocal that IMAX is the intended format anyway, so this is one to catch in theaters rather than wait out.

Do I Need to Watch Troy Before The Odyssey?

Nope. Nolan's film gives you everything you need about the Trojan War through its own flashbacks, and Troy takes enough liberties that treating it as a strict prequel will just confuse you. Watch it after, as the origin story of the mess Odysseus spends ten years escaping.

What's the Most Faithful Adaptation of Homer's Poem?

The 1997 miniseries is the most complete, hitting nearly every episode of the poem in order. The Return is the most faithful in spirit to the poem's final books, even though it strips out the gods. Nolan's film sits somewhere in between, keeping the monsters while restructuring the timeline. Honestly, watching all three is the closest thing to a screen version of actually reading it.

So where do you start? Our vote: The Return this weekend, because the contrast with Nolan is the whole show, then Kaos once you're ready to be mad at Netflix all over again.