Musk promised an AI movie to take on a $300m blockbuster. Critics got 7 minutes
- Oct 24, 2026
Back in July, Elon Musk made Hollywood a promise.
He'd make his own version of one of the biggest films of the year, without a single actor, using nothing but AI.
Three months later, the first piece has arrived. It runs for seven minutes.
On Oct. 23, Grok Imagine, the video tool from Musk's AI company, posted Episode 1 of its AI-generated Odyssey on X. Musk shared it that night with four words: "Odyssey with Grok Imagine."
How it started
The feud goes back to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, which opened in July and had taken more than $300 million worldwide by the following week, Gizmodo reported.
Musk spent weeks criticising Nolan's film, TechCrunch reported, lashing out over its casting. Then, when an X user floated a $100 million version directed by Mel Gibson, Musk replied "I'm down."
Nolan, for his part, has called himself "a techno-skeptic". He has said that before AI, he had never seen a technology "so completely rejected by the public", TechCrunch reported.
Musk, meanwhile, had a better idea. About ten minutes after his reply, he posted this.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey.
Elon Musk, on X
He posted a three-minute AI clip alongside it. Gizmodo noticed the rowers in the background weren't actually rowing, and Odysseus appeared to be wearing an orange foam earplug.
The new episode is longer and sharper. It was made with Wonder Studios, a UK studio that specialises in AI films, and director Dev Walker, and it was posted in 4K. You can watch it on Grok Imagine's post on X.
It shows a bearded hero in a dark cloak, a woman holding a baby, and a fleet of black-sailed ships crossing a grey sea.
The verdict
Critics were not won over.
TechCrunch's Anthony Ha admitted it was "not as spectacularly ugly as I'd expected", but said "the clip feels completely airless".
"If it was a video game cutscene, I would have hit the 'skip' button," he wrote.
Wonder Studios was more upbeat, sharing the episode with a line of its own: "Homer didn't have Grok… we do."
Grok Imagine hasn't said how many episodes are coming, or when the next one lands. Musk's deadline for the full film is two months away.
