If 'The Odyssey' came to Bollywood, this would be the perfect cast

 

With Christopher Nolan's “The Odyssey’ dominating movie chatter this year, it's hard not to wonder: what if Homer's epic got the Bollywood treatment instead? A king lost at sea for ten years, a wife holding an entire kingdom together through sheer wit, gods meddling in mortal affairs, monsters, seductresses, and a homecoming that takes an entire decade to earn - it definitely deserves a masala-scale adaptation.

The story has survived nearly three thousand years because its bones are universal: betrayal, longing, cunning, and the long road home. Bollywood has been telling versions of this story for decades - it just hasn't had the sea monsters yet. So we cast it. Here's our dream Bollywood Odyssey, role by role.

Odysseus: Hrithik Roshan

Every Odyssey lives or dies on its lead. Odysseus isn't a straightforward hero - he's a king who wins wars not through brute strength but through cunning, patience, and the occasional brilliant lie. He needs to be physically commanding enough to convince us he survived a decade of monsters and shipwrecks, but sharp enough that we believe he outwitted a Cyclops with wordplay alone.

Hrithik Roshan, the “Greek God” of Bollywood, with his sharp, symmetrical facial features, light eyes, and tall, muscular body - becomes the obvious pick. He's built a career on exactly this combination - the physicality of War and Kaabil, paired with an ability to carry exhaustion and vulnerability without losing his commanding presence. Odysseus spends the whole story being battered by forces bigger than himself and somehow staying two steps ahead of them. That's a Hrithik role if there ever was one.

Penelope: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan

Here's the thing people forget about Penelope: she isn't just a passive captivating beauty waiting by the window for ten years. Rather she runs an entire kingdom, fends off a hall full of suitors, and outsmarts every single one of them - most famously by unweaving her loom work each night to stall for time. She is arguably the smartest character in the entire epic.

Aishwarya Rai has spent her career playing exactly this kind of woman - quietly brilliant, underestimated by everyone around her, and always several moves ahead. Think Ponniyin Selvan: Part I & Part II or Jodhaa Akbar. Penelope isn't a supporting character propping up Odysseus's journey; she's running her own parallel story of survival and strategy, and Rai is the only choice who could carry that with the gravity it deserves.

Telemachus: Agastya Nanda

Telemachus starts the story as a boy who barely remembers his father and ends it fighting alongside him as a man. It's a coming-of-age arc buried inside an epic, and it needs an actor who can believably grow up on screen - someone carrying the specific ache of trying to live up to a legacy he never got to fully know.

Agastya Nanda, Amitabh Bacchan’s grandson, brings something almost uncanny to this role. There's a real, lived-in quality to watching an actor find his own footing in an industry shaped by his grandfather's legend. This casting doesn't just work on paper; it works on a level the audience will feel.

Circe: Tabu

Circe has to do something genuinely hard: convince the audience that an entire crew of hardened, homesick sailors would forget their wives, their kingdom, and their reason for living just to stay on her island a little longer. That's not a role for anyone who reads as merely "beautiful" on screen - it needs real, dangerous magnetism.

Tabu has that presence in spades. Maqbool, where she plays Nimmi, a character inspired by Lady Macbeth. Showcasing  her ability to play a seductive, manipulative, and powerful figure who pulls men into moral ruin- much like Circe transforming Odysseus's men on her island. Or, Haider, Drishyam and Dune:Prophecy- in these films, Tabu delivers masterful performances where command, vulnerability, and danger coexist seamlessly to create a deeply mythical, theatrical tone. Circe isn't a temptress for temptation's sake - she's a sorceress in complete control of every room she's in, and Tabu would own that.

Athena: Alia Bhatt

Athena is the story's quiet architect. She doesn't fight Odysseus's battles for him, but she's constantly steering events from the shadows, as Odysseus' patron mother, several steps ahead of gods and mortals alike. It's a role built on restraint and intelligence rather than spectacle.

Alia's performances in Raazi and Jigra, showcase the strategic mind, quiet authority, and protective grit required to play the Greek goddess Athena. Additionally, her radiant screen presence only ends up complimenting her role as a philosophical and divine goddess Athena  

Poseidon: Amitabh Bachchan

Poseidon is the reason Odysseus's ten-year journey takes ten years at all - an enraged god hurling storms and monsters at one man out of pure, divine spite. The role doesn't need much screen time. It needs a voice and a presence that can make the audience feel the goosebumps and the sea itself trembling.

Amitabh Bachchan's voice alone could do the heavy lifting here. Think of the sheer menace he's carried in roles that lean on gravitas over dialogue count - Poseidon barely needs to appear on screen to be terrifying if Bachchan is behind it.

Agamemnon: Sanjay Dutt

Agamemnon's arc is a tragedy folded inside the epic: a king who returns from Troy triumphant, only to be murdered by his own wife almost as soon as he walks through the door. It's a role that needs to play imposing authority in one scene and let it collapse into vulnerability in the next.

Sanjay Dutt has the physical heft and commanding-general energy the role demands, and films like Vaastav prove he can sell that kind of dramatic unraveling without losing the audience's respect for the character.

Zeus: Naseeruddin Shah

With Bachchan already commanding the sea as Poseidon, Zeus needed a different register entirely - less thunder, more weary, all-seeing authority. He's a god who's watched mortals make the same mistakes for centuries and is faintly, wryly amused by all of it.

Naseeruddin Shah has built a career on this exact dry, all-knowing command - see Sarfarosh or A Wednesday. Zeus doesn't rule through volume; he rules through presence, and Shah has that in spades.

Sinon: Nawazuddin Siddiqui

Technically a figure from the fall of Troy rather than the Odyssey itself, Sinon is often folded into adaptations because the Trojan Horse was Odysseus's plan. His entire job is deception: convincing an entire city to wheel a giant wooden horse through their own gates.

This is Nawazuddin Siddiqui's signature register - unassuming on the surface, quietly dangerous underneath, as seen in Raman Raghav 2.0 and Manjhi. He'd turn the Trojan Horse con into a masterclass in psychological manipulation rather than pure spectacle.

Eurycleia: Ratna Pathak Shah

A small but pivotal role: Eurycleia is the old nurse who recognizes the disguised Odysseus by a childhood scar, decades after he left home. It's a role built entirely on quiet loyalty and sharp perceptiveness, delivered in just a handful of scenes.

Ratna Pathak Shah has made a career of this kind of understated, deeply felt work - the kind of performance that doesn't need a single raised voice to land emotionally.

Betrayal, loyalty, gods meddling in mortal affairs, a hero who wins through wit as much as strength, a wife smarter than everyone around her - Indian cinema has been telling versions of this story for decades. This time, the origin of the adaptation would simply be Greek. 

Text by Mriganka Singh 

Edited by Sabrina Mathews