According to Variety, he’s teaming with director George Miller and Warner Bros. to bring the epic poem to outer space, with Pitt playing the title role of Odysseus in a re-imagining of the classic fable.
If you escaped high school and college without reading “The Odyssey,” here’s a refresher — it’s technically a sequel to “The Iliad,” dealing with the aftermath of the Trojan War. It’s centered around the return journey of Odysseus, the most clever of Greek soldiers and the builder of the famous Trojan horse. All he wants to do is get home to his wife and son, but he’s constantly waylaid by sexy sea-nymphs, witches, cyclops, and monsters.
But don’t look for Pitt to adopt the enormous muscles and skimpy leather he wore in “Troy” (sorry, girls.) With Miller looking to transfer the story to a futuristic setting in outer space, it should be really interesting to see Pitt venture into sci-fi, a genre he flirted with in “Twelve Monkeys.
And “The Odyssey” is certainly a story that lends itself to revision — you probably remember the last time it was seen onscreen was in the Coen Brothers’ classic “O Brother, Where Art Thou” (and you have to laugh that Pitt will essentially be playing the same role as his good friend, George Clooney) .
So, what do you think, readers? Excited to see Brad Pitt play another swashbuckling hero? Curious to see him set in space? Or do the classical purists among you wish they’d stop revising, and set “The Odyssey” in ancient Greece again?
