By Alex Ritman
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Courtesy The Asylum “Our journey begins with the Cyclops,” says a ginger-bearded and bald Odysseus somewhat nonchalantly in the trailer for “The Odyssey,” moments before a giant one-eyed AI-generated monster bursts onto the screens. The film, based — rather loosely — on Homer’s epic poem, released this summer and was met with mostly comic derision and a flurry of one-star reviews. “Dumb, ridiculous, embarrassing, nonsensical,” wrote one online critic. “Not a single redeeming feature,” bellowed another. But this “Odyssey” was not Christopher Nolan’s $250 million “Odyssey,” the epic from Universal, something many online said they’d discovered only after buying the film online. Nor was this the “historical accurate” retelling touted by Elon Musk and made using Grok. This was the $250,000 version from the Asylum, the B-movie icons and American Film Market stalwarts both loved and loathed for its vast number of so-called “mockbuster” rip-offs, its cult “Sharknado” franchise and an array of ludicrous film posters often involving multiple-headed monsters. In fairness, “The Odyssey” — thanks to being in the public domain for roughly 2,500 years — isn’t strictly a mockbuster. The title didn’t need to be tweaked for copyright reasons, like the Asylum did with other self-aware cash-ins “Top Gunner,” “The Da Vinci Treasure,” “Jurassic Domination,” “Alien Disclosure Day,” “Immortal Combat” and many more. But the film was absolutely made and timed to ride on the $125 million M&A coattails of Universal’s pic and, the company claims, succeeded. “It performed very well,” says David Rimawi, CEO and co-founder of the Asylum. “We’ve said this before, but we’ve found there’s a direct correlation between how well the studio film does and how well ours does. If it’s a hit, ours is generally a hit as well.”
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