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Why Matt Damon Had Female Stunt Double for Odyssey Scene

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As Josh Horowitz points out, Matt Damon had quite an impressive physique in The Odyssey, specifically in the bicep region. However, the actor confessed he can’t take full credit for all the times you see his muscular limbs in the film.

During a recent interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast host, Damon revealed that he actually had a female stunt double for one key scene in Christopher Nolan’s epic action fantasy film.

After thanking Horowitz for the “high praise,” The Rip actor explained, “When we did the forced perspective stuff of the Laestrygonians — I don’t know if there’s been a thing about how we did it — there were these stunt men who were all seven feet,” he said, referring to the giant warriors in The Odyssey.

“And then they got stuntmen who were under five feet, and so my double was a woman, a female stunt performer, who had the greatest arms I’ve ever seen,” he added.

Damon recalled first meeting the stunt double in the catering tent while filming and going up to hug her and thank her “for all the work she put in.”

“So there are those shots in the movie where you see these giants looming over me, and so it was almost 100 percent my arms in the movie, but you gotta give it up where it’s due,” he said.

The Odyssey, based on Homer’s ancient Greek poem, follows King Odysseus’ (Damon) dangerous voyage back to Ithaca after the Trojan War, including battles with mythical creatures, as he attempts to reunite with his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and son, Telemachus (Tom Holland). The film also stars Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, John Leguizamo, Elliot Page, Mia Goth, Corey Hawkins, Jon Bernthal, Samantha Morton, Travis Scott and Benny Safdie. 

Following its July 17 release, the film scored a major box office victory, collecting more than $264 million globally in its debut weekend.

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Jacob Elordi On Filming ‘Euphoria’ Death Scene & Returning For Final Season: “I Think Sam Brought Me Back To Torture Me”

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Jacob Elordi had a gruesome death on the final season of Euphoria and is giving insight into how that scene was shot.

While making an appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Elordi had a mini Euphoria reunion with co-star Colman Domingo, who is guest-hosting the late-night talk show in Kimmel’s absence.

Domingo brought up his character’s death in the HBO series with the audience audibly letting out an “Aww.”

“Thanks,” Elordi jokingly said to the audience. “Finally, after eight years of all of you saying, ‘F*** Nate, kill Nate, Nate’s a piece of sh**…’ Yeah, I read your tweets… Now you’re sad.”

Elordi played high school bully Nate, who in Season 3 dealt with some goons who tormented him and brutally physically assaulted him.

“I think Sam [Levinson] brought me back to torture me,” the actor said of the series creator. “It was like, six weeks of me just getting beat by a seven-foot guy. I was just running the whole time.”

For filming his character’s death, Elordi explained, “I got locked in a coffin for two days straight with prosthetics and a fake tongue, and I couldn’t see out of my eyes. And then Sam put snakes into the coffin.”

Of his reptilian co-star, Elordi said, “he had a very nice personality,” adding, “He was very docile and very sleepy. I don’t think he’d had a lot of sun … So I was kind of nudging him, trying to get him to get active and do the scene, because he was meant to be threatening. But he was like a little dog. He just kept curling up at my feet.”

Watch Elordi’s full interview in the video below.

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La La Land Poster Corrects Ryan Gosling’s Flat Hand 10 Years Later

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Ryan Gosling can finally sleep at night.

After nearly a decade of joking that his pose on the original La La Land poster “haunted” him, Lionsgate has finally fixed it with a new poster celebrating the film’s 10th anniversary.

The updated artwork arrives as La La Land heads back to theaters beginning Aug. 16, when the Oscar-winning musical will return to Dolby Cinema at AMC Theatres for its anniversary re-release. A La La Land musical is also currently in development for Broadway.

The original poster for the 2016 film features Emma Stone and Gosling dancing against the Los Angeles skyline. Both actors have one arm raised, but while Stone’s hand is extended up, Gosling tilted his hand flat — a choice he has since joked he regretted.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal in 2024, the Barbie star reflected on why the pose still “haunts” him.

“Maybe La La Land,” he said when asked if there was a role he’d like to do over. “There’s a moment that haunts me where we’re dancing, Emma and I, and I didn’t know this would become the poster for the movie, but I thought we were supposed to have our hands up and I thought it’d be cool to put my hand [flat].”

“Even though everyone told me it wasn’t cool, I was sure it was cooler,” he continued. “Now when I look at it, and I have to see it all the time, you know what would’ve been cooler… [the correct pose]. It just killed the energy that way. I call it La La hand.”

Gosling even poked fun at the moment earlier this year while promoting Project Hail Mary, releasing a video in March in which he finally corrected his “La La hand.”

Directed by Damien Chazelle, La La Land follows aspiring actress Mia (Stone) and jazz musician Sebastian (Gosling) as they chase their Hollywood dreams while falling in love.

The film won six Academy Awards, including best director for Chazelle and best actress for Stone. It is also remembered for the infamous best picture mix-up at the 2017 Oscars, when La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner before it was revealed that Moonlight had actually taken home the award.

La La Land poster 2026

Lionsgate

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The Odyssey: Why Christopher Nolan’s Movie Had Huge Box Office Opening

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Christopher Nolan‘s box office journey with The Odyssey has gotten off to an eye-opening start.

If there were any questions regarding whether a nearly three-hour, R-rated adaptation of a 2,700-year-old Greek poem — not to mention a movie that initially got caught up in the culture wars — would find success, those concerns were swiftly vanquished. In landing 2026’s biggest live-action opening weekend, The Odyssey brought home $123.5 million domestically with a global launch of $263.7 million, with the latter marking the accomplished filmmaker’s highest-grossing worldwide opening ever.

It’s not news that Nolan, hot off his first best director Oscar for 2023’s Oppenheimer, has become a brand unto himself as he continues his run as one of Hollywood’s most sure-thing directors. But the fact that half of the film’s audiences were between the ages of 18 and 34 confirmed that he has captured the excitement of Gen Z and younger millennial filmgoers as much as that of older viewers who might typically be more drawn to an adaptation of classic literature. Audiences cited Nolan as their top reason for seeing The Odyssey, according to PostTrak surveys, which is no small feat, given that the star-studded cast includes Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya, Charlize Theron and no shortage of others.

The Odyssey

Universal

“We had high expectations for the movie and high expectations for our performance, and it exceeded both,” IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond tells The Hollywood Reporter. Indeed, fans were focused on experiencing the film on IMAX after The Odyssey became the first narrative feature shot entirely on the company’s cameras. “Chris knows how to use IMAX technology and the IMAX brand as well as anyone on the planet.”

The Odyssey is unlikely to drift away anytime soon, with Gelfond pointing out that IMAX presales for the film’s forthcoming sophomore frame “are equivalent to some of our really best movies’ opening weekends.” Competing studios presumably anticipated the high demand, as there are no wide releases scheduled for this coming weekend in between The Odyssey and the July 31 release of Sony’s similarly anticipated Spider-Man: Brand New Day, representing a rarity for a coveted July frame.

“Presales are just incredibly backloaded because we see people waiting to get the best seat that they can and see it in the way that the filmmaker intends it to be seen,” notes Fandango director of analytics and Box Office Theory founder Shawn Robbins. “There are plenty of theaters around the country where shows are almost — if not totally — sold out into the second, third, fourth weekend of the film’s run. So it definitely signals that The Odyssey will be around in theaters for quite a while, just like Oppenheimer was.”

Director Christopher Nolan (left), with Matt Damon (as Odysseus) and Zendaya (as Athena), on the set of The Odyssey.

Universal Pictures

The appeal for younger audiences can be felt not just in ticket sales but through engagement in other ways, as social media memes embraced The Odyssey, which centers on Damon’s Odysseus making his arduous trip back to Ithaca after the Trojan War. Additionally, the film became the fastest to hit a million watches on Letterboxd by accomplishing the feat in six days, half the time that it took previous champ Barbie and other titles since, like Project Hail Mary and Backrooms. Notably, 2010’s Inception was the first feature to reach the seven-figure milestone, proving Nolan’s longstanding credibility with cinephiles.

“Nolan has cultivated such an incredibly diverse audience, and a lot of it is that Gen Z and younger millennial side,” says Robbins. “That’s really all thanks to his library of films, especially over the last 10 or 15 years. We point to The Dark Knight and Inception and his earlier work, but also look at [2014’s] Interstellar. We saw high demand when Interstellar rereleased in theaters about a year and a half ago. It just kept gaining a following, and a lot of that was among younger moviegoers. With all of his films, there are tons of content creators breaking down his storytelling, his writing, maybe the cinematography or the music. There are just so many elements to his movies that intrigue and envelop people.”

In recent years, studios have emphasized the importance of eventizing filmgoing, hoping for buzzy word of mouth to encourage audiences to experience a project in a way that they can’t from their couch, and premium large format screens have emerged as a key way to accomplish this. The word of mouth was clearly stellar, between the film’s A CinemaScore and a 94 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, tied for Nolan’s best mark ever. This meant that viewers flocked not only to IMAX theaters — which pulled in $51.8 million globally to account for 23 percent of The Odyssey’s haul — but especially to the 41 theaters worldwide that screen IMAX 70mm film.

As for whether IMAX can expand the number of screens showing 70mm, Gelfond notes that the theater count is up from 30 at the time of the Oppenheimer release. “There are some inherent limitations on our ability to do it, including finding boxes that big to fit the right aspect ratio and finding projectors that we can refurbish,” he says. “We’re always looking, but it’s complicated.” The exec notes that he did see online conversation surrounding some individuals feeling priced out of the IMAX experience and adds about the company that does not set its ticket prices: “We’re as aggressive as we can be. We want to provide a great experience. We want the right aspect ratio. We want the projector to show the best image they can. We’re sensitive to the demand, but we’re not going to lower our quality standards.”

After a bumpy stretch of July weekends that saw underperforming openings for such franchise entries as Supergirl, Minions & Monsters and Moana, the industry is quickly embracing the newfound optimism. And while Nolan may have stood out among his movie’s bold-faced names, there’s no doubt that the starry cast added to the spectacle. Among those sparking social media chatter for The Odyssey was Holland, whose role as Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, gave him the opportunity for a high-profile performance without his superhero suit (although he’ll be onscreen as Spidey soon enough, too). “His performance in The Odyssey shows a new side of him that will really just continue to grow his fan base,” observes Robbins.

Perhaps Nolan himself best summed up a key element of his own movies’ appeal when explaining to THR about a goal that he carries throughout his work: “I try to leave each film I do with thematic concerns and questions that stay a little bit open for me — and hopefully the audience, too.”

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