Elon Musk’s attacks on The Odyssey did not go over well with Hollywood hitmaker Scott Derrickson.
Derrickson, who directed Marvel’s Doctor Strange and the horror hits The Black Phone and Sinister, ripped Musk for his months of complaining about Christopher Nolan’s choice to cast Black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy and trans actor Elliot Page as one of the film’s warriors in the fictional Greek epic.
Musk amplified posts arguing that Nolan’s casting Nyong’o was “racist towards the Greek people” and called Page’s casting “one of the dumbest and twisted things I’ve ever heard.”
He also attacked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, over his belief that Nolan cast the actors to meet diversity requirements for the Oscars’ Best Picture category. Those requirements can be satisfied with off-camera talent, as was evident when Nolan’s Oppenheimer won Best Picture with a predominantly white cast in 2024.
Still, Musk has continued obsessing about the film online.
Derrickson blasted him in a fed-up post on X that has since been deleted, “Clearly @elonmusk doesn’t know s--t about cinema.” He added that Musk “stopped reading in his 20s” and “His opinions on art are worthless.”
Derrickson was resolute when one X user argued that “no one’s opinion on art is worthless,” according to The Wrap.
The director replied, “Great art says otherwise.”
Musk was undeterred. Following Derrickson’s post, to which he did not reply, he told another X user that he was “down” with their suggestion to give “Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armor, weapons and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek.”
After that, he had yet another idea to push his agenda, announcing on X that he’d make another Odyssey with his AI, Grok. “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
