Lupita Nyong'o Confirmed To Play The Odyssey's Helen Of Troy

Film ^ | May 12, 2026 | DEBOPRIYAA DUTTA

[Bon of Babble]

Lupita Nyong'o, has been confirmed to play Helen of Troy — as well as her twin sister, Clytemnestra.

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: dei; fail; furyspeople; hollywood; movies; queencharlotte

[Nateman]

[ek_hornbeck]

Nolan is a pretentious director - a lot of what he makes is mindless fluff, which is fine, but what isn't fine is thinking that it's more than it is. He and his fans like to pretend that a series of kid's comic book-based movies about a man in a bat suit fighting a clown with green hair are today's answer to Citizen Kane.

Dunkirk is probably the only film by Nolan that I found not to be overblown.

[Reily]

Agree!

[Bon of Babble]

Exactly.

[Reily]

There’s a lawsuit from Egypt over that portrayal of Cleopatra.

[sphinx]

I suspect you (x) may be right about the timing issues. The lead times are a huge part of the story, and the bigger the film, the more subject it becomes to meddling by studio suits and outside investors.

At the other end of the spectrum, some small indie movies are conceived and shot pretty quickly, and it's hard to beat a writer/director team of one for armor against the DEI Wokistas.

The Odyssey was probably going through the studio grind on greenlighting during Peak Woke. The stuntcasting could have come from anywhere, but I can easily imagine a studio exec telling Nolan that Odysseus, Achilles, Hector, Helen, Agamemnon, or Athena had to be black, take your pick.

I glanced at the Universal filmography of movies produced and/or distributed going back to 2000. It's tolerably solid, meaning that I've actually watched and enjoyed a dozen or more of them. I'm sure there are some stinkers on the list as well, but since I do due diligence before watching anything, I tend to like most of the things I see.

I certainly don't get the sense that Universal is competing in the Disney Idiocy Olympics on the woke stuff. Netflix is a mediocrity mill with an occasional good movie sprinked in. Apple and Amazon are mixed bags but I think the Universal slate compares well.

All of which means that I'm curious about where this bad idea came from.

I do think that we're past Peak Woke; I called that a couple of years ago when CODA beat out the gay cowboy movie for Best Picture. Several of the studios seem to be scrambling to reset, but there's still a lot of long lead time sludge in the pipeline and not enough heads have rolled in management.

[PIF]

Skanks, the lot

[mewzilla]

George the Giant Slayer has weighed in...

https://youtu.be/dsi6Koj06F0?si=vyaZq8xCnGqtqx_8

15 minutes.

Excellent analysis.

[x]

Nolan’s 2020 film “Tenet” bombed. That was the fault of a bad concept, a lousy, complicated, confusing script, and poor sound mixing, but the lead, Denzel Washington’s son, was miscast and uninspiring. John David Washington can’t be blamed for the film’s failure by any means, but it does seem like Nolan gets too caught up in his big idea, and casting in his pictures is hit or miss.

[JayGalt]

I understand but you were suggesting that this awful casting won’t matter, that as much as is being made on the Devil Wore Pravda currently, will be grossed by the Odyssey. It’s apples & oranges.
Cynically Hollywood slips their liberal ideology into movies with popular subject matter, thinking the public will just go along. Didn’t work with Snow White or several other recent attempts. IMO won’t work this time. Americans vote with their feet.

[DPMD]

Next up: Herve Villechaise (I know he’s dead, er I mean voting democrat) as Jack in the Reacher sequel. Peter Dinklage as Hercules.

[sphinx]

You may be right. Christopher Nolan isn’t someone I especially follow. I liked The Prestige, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer, with some reservations. None of the rest have really grabbed me; Interstellar I at least tried to watch, but it didn’t hit the mark for me.

He’s made some Spandex Man movies that I gather have been well received, but I’m not a Spandex Man fan regardless of who directs.

I don’t understand why studios keep giving him big budgets.

[DPMD]

Mozetta Quint’avions of Troy.

[DPMD]

Troy’vacious of Hell, Michigan.

[central_va]

I think Steve Martin was born a poor black child.

[JayGalt]

The host had an interesting take but I had to bolt when the “woman” came on opening with “how much was father & son ...in a hetero normative marriage.”
Anyone who can glibly roll that off their tongue lives in a alternate universe where there is no path to relevance in my universe.

[Antoninus]

She's a marginally pretty lady, but not Helen of Troy. Sorry. This isn't even edgy. It's stupid.

They also cast Elleniot Page, celebrity tranny, in one of the roles.

Honestly, I think they are just laughing at us at this point.

[PallMal]

These efforts to cast black actors and actresses in roles in which the original character or historical person was NOT black are actually an insult to black people because they suggest that there are no real-world black persons worthy of memorialization in film and literature

I agree -- there is no need for this nonsense. This foolishness of placing blacks in these roles should be an embarrassment to blacks.

Just off the top of my head, you have the Russian Abram Gannibal and his offspring Pushkin, you have Alexandre Dumas, etc. all could be played by black or at least, mixed-race actors.

No need for the fakeness of placing blacks in roles like Helen of Troy, Anne Boleyn, or whatever other weird concoction.

[MinorityRepublican]

We could do a movie on Crispus Attucks and it is easy to remain historically accurate while casting diverse actors.

[dforest]

I did and I think you act like a nutter over a woke and bad adaptation of a classic.