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Jonathan Liebesman's Odysseus Ends Up at Warner Brothers

by Alex Billington
April 24, 2009

Good news for Jonathan Liebesman - his next project titled Odysseus will be a Warner Brothers feature. The studio won a bidding war over Paramount for the film, which features a script written by Liebesman's collaborator Ann Peacock. Odysseus is another retelling of the classic story about the legendary hero Odysseus, who returns to his island after 20 years of fighting the Trojan Wars, only to find his kingdom under the brutal occupation of an invading force. Odysseus single-handedly defeats every last man and takes back his wife, his son and his kingdom. 300 producer Gianni Nunnari is developing via Hollywood Gang.

We were the first to reveal details on this back in January. At the time, Liebesman described it as a "small taut kintetic action film" in the same vein as a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western or Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. THR says that the intent is to make "not a sleepy swords-and-sandles epic but a bloody relentless revenge movie," like 300 meets Taken. I talked with Liebesman and he says unlike epics such as Troy, this will be a very gritty, hand-held, hardcore revenge movie. He compares it to Rambo, where one guy just kicks a lot of ass. It'll be very real, very down to earth, and any effects and CGI will be invisible.

It sounds like a pretty great idea and I'm fairly excited to see Liebesman develop it, because he's becoming a better director with each and every film. This project will really need that intensity and grittiness to live up to Zack Snyder's 300, which it could possibly do if all goes well. Liebesman is currently working on the alien film Battle: Los Angeles at Sony. He also has The Killing Room, which premiered at Sundance, and is still looking for a distributor. Odysseus will be Liebesman's very next project following Battle: Los Angeles.

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