Tom Holland just admitted he spent his first day on Christopher Nolan‘s ‘The Odyssey‘ set convinced he had totally blown his opening scene, and the reason why is pretty funny.
Talking to Fandango, Holland said working with IMAX cameras for the first time was “an experience,” calling it “unlike anything I have seen before.” He was filming a scene with Jon Bernthal when Nolan kept stopping and yelling cut, over and over, and neither actor had a clue why. Holland said he turned to Bernthal and asked, “Why does he keep cutting?“
Why Christopher Nolan Kept Yelling Cut on the IMAX Camera Set
Turns out it had nothing to do with the acting at all. ‘The Odyssey‘ is the first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX cameras, and those cameras have one big catch. The magazines only hold about three minutes of footage before they need reloading. Holland said he just didn’t know that going in.
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So naturally, his brain jumped straight to the worst. “In my head, I was like, ‘Does he not like what we’re doing? What is happening?’” he said. It wasn’t until stunt coordinator George Cottle pulled him aside and explained it plainly, “No, no, no, no, no, there’s only three minutes in the mag,” that it finally clicked. Holland said the relief was huge, since he had been convinced he was “totally shitting the bed in this scene.“
It’s a good reminder of just how different it is shooting on Nolan’s beloved large-format film, even for someone as seasoned as Holland after years leading the Spider-Man franchise. Another outlet pointed out that those early interruptions felt to him like “a silent verdict on his performance.”
Christopher Nolan Makes Film History With Full IMAX Feature
This film is a genuine milestone for Nolan, who’s used IMAX cameras since ‘The Dark Knight‘ back in 2008, right through ‘Inception,‘ ‘Interstellar,’ ‘Dunkirk,’ ‘Tenet,’ and ‘Oppenheimer.’ For ‘The Odyssey,’ he actually worked with IMAX to build lighter, quieter cameras that could handle dialogue-heavy scenes, which is what made it possible to shoot an entire narrative feature this way for the first time.
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Nolan has talked about why he’s willing to take on that kind of risk. In a chat with GQ, he put it simply: “the only sure thing is something that’s not a sure thing.”
‘The Odyssey’ Cast and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man Schedule Shuffle
The movie brings Holland into a huge cast, with Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Zendaya as Athena, Charlize Theron as Circe, Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, and Robert Pattinson playing the suitor Antinous. It follows Odysseus’s long journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, while Penelope holds off suitors and Telemachus searches for the father he barely knows.
Holland also mentioned that getting to be part of this meant some serious schedule juggling, including asking Sony to push back production on ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘ so he could join. He thinks that the delay actually ended up helping the Spider-Man movie, too.
‘The Odyssey‘ opens in theaters July 17, 2026.
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