The picture was already shot last year. It was planned and cast back in the Biden DEI era. So it’s kind of a relic of that period, like last year’s Snow White. That movie though, was actually shot in 2022 and only released last year.
Nolan’s pic was shot on IMAX and that’s kind of cool.
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.