Disney Almost Made The Odyssey Into A Film Years Before Christopher Nolan
For millions of viewers, Christopher Nolan’s movie will have been their first introduction to the epic Ancient Greek story about Odysseus’ heroic journey home to his beloved wife Penelope at the end of the Trojan war. And while The Odyssey has been adapted for the screen on numerous occasions in the past, what you might realise is that, at one point, Disney looked poised to have a go at it. The story goes that, at the cusp of Disney’s so-called “Renaissance” towards the end of the 20th century – which saw the studio achieving renewed success thanks to films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King – execs gathered the creative team for a series of so-called “Gong Show” pitch meetings. In these quick fire meetings, writers and animators had a short amount of time to pitch their ideas for stories, many of which would then be greenlit. One of these meetings saw a Disney-fied version of The Odyssey being put forward as an idea, with the company going …
