Jerry Bruckheimer is taking Homer’s The Odyssey back to the screen, this time as an animated musical built from Jorge Rivera-Herrans’ viral project Epic. Bruckheimer has partnered with Rivera-Herrans and Atlantic Music Group president Kevin Weaver to produce the film, with Chad Oman of Jerry Bruckheimer Films also attached.
The project is in the nascent stages, but CAA is expected to begin taking it out to studios and streamers for presentations possibly as early as next week. If the package lands, it would mark Bruckheimer’s first move into animation and add another high-profile adaptation to a story Homer first began narrating in the 8th century B.C., about 2,700 years ago.
Rivera-Herrans built Epic from the ground up. He began it as his senior thesis at the University of Notre Dame, started posting his creative process on TikTok in 2021 during the pandemic, and began releasing the sagas as musicals in 2022. The self-released EPs hit No. 1 on iTunes and the soundtrack charts, and at one point Epic occupied nine out of the top 10 soundtrack chart listings.
The scale of the audience explains why the property has now drawn Hollywood’s attention. The project has been reported at more than 4 billion global streams and over 7 billion short-form views, and Rivera-Herrans signed with Atlantic in 2023 after every label courted him. Weaver spent two years pursuing him before that deal came together, a sign of how quickly a creator who started with a thesis project became a major music-business prize.
The timing also puts the animated version into a crowded field. Christopher Nolan is prepping a live-action retelling of The Odyssey that is set to open July 17, a separate project that underscores the industry’s renewed appetite for Homer’s saga. But the Bruckheimer film is still being built, and the immediate next step is not production but the sales pitch: CAA’s presentations to studios and streamers, likely starting next week.
That is the real measure of where this stands. Bruckheimer has the name, Rivera-Herrans has the audience, and the material has already proven it can travel far beyond the stage. What remains to be answered is whether the companies hearing the pitch want to turn a viral musical into an animated event before Nolan’s version reaches theaters.
