Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson shreds Elon Musk’s ‘Odyssey’ AI idea: ‘Doesn’t know s**t’
After Elon Musk boasted Grok will crank out a feature-length version of The Odyssey, a Marvel director on X gave it decidedly short shrift.
Let’s talk Elon Musk, AI, and The Odyssey. Twitter’s most enthusiastic billionaire has kicked up another storm, and yes, Hollywood’s not impressed.
Musk's big Odyssey boast
It started with Musk casually dropping a three-minute, AI-generated snippet from Homer's The Odyssey online — courtesy of his own chatbot, Grok.
In classic fashion, Musk went on to boldly announce that Grok Imagine would whip up a ‘feature-length’ version of the epic poem before the end of 2026. Not just any old version, he promised: this would be ‘historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.’
Cue film Twitter melting down for several reasons — not least Musk’s ongoing beef with Christopher Nolan over the director’s upcoming blockbuster take on The Odyssey. For months now, Musk’s been using his platform to slag off the film, mostly because of cast and supposed “woke” choices.
Directors bite back
Scott Derrickson — director of Doctor Strange and The Black Phone — didn’t mince his words.
On X (which Musk also owns, naturally), Derrickson fired back: ‘Clearly @elonmusk doesn’t know sh*t about cinema & he stopped reading in his 20s. His opinions on art are worthless.’
So, don’t expect Derrickson to be streaming the AI Odyssey anytime soon.
Musk, meanwhile, kept poking at Nolan’s version. Back in March, he branded the director an ‘anti-White racist’ after*Lupita Nyong’o was cast as Helen of Troy, accusing Nolan of picking her only ‘for awards’ and saying he’d ‘lost his integrity’.
Box office shrugs off drama
For all the noise, Nolan’s film doesn’t seem to have suffered. On opening weekend, the Matt Damon-fronted epic raked in $264 million globally, and frankly, it’s still packing out screens days later.
As for Musk's actual AI Odyssey movie—let’s just say even he seems open to alternatives. After someone online suggested he throw '$100 million at Mel Gibson' to direct a historically pedantic Odyssey adaptation (think everything down to Homeric Greek dialogue), Musk replied that he was 'down'. No word from Gibson or Musk’s camp since, and the suggestion’s probably as likely as a polite Musk tweet.
If this whole saga feels familiar, that’s because it is. Musk’s been waging war on “woke” cinema for years now, having previously gone after Barbie and Disney’s Snow White reboot. Apparently, AI is his next big play.