W20 Preview: The Odyssey Trailer, Cannes Kicks Off Tuesday, and Jude Law Is Putin

1 month ago by Alex Reed 6 min read

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🎬 This week splits the calendar in half. The first half belongs to Cannes — the 79th festival opens Tuesday with Park Chan-wook chairing the jury, and Christopher Nolan's massive The Odyssey trailer is still echoing from its Late Show drop last Monday. The second half belongs to Wednesday's penultimate The Boys episode and Friday's most interesting new release: Olivier Assayas's political thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin, with Jude Law as Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano as his fictional whisperer. Here's everything worth your screen time between Monday and Sunday.

The Odyssey trailer is the loudest movie thing happening right now

If you somehow missed it, Christopher Nolan dropped the full trailer for The Odyssey on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday May 4 — exactly a week ago — and the internet hasn't really stopped talking about it since. We finally got the Cyclops. We finally heard Matt Damon as Odysseus. And we got our first real look at what Nolan keeps calling "the first narrative feature shot entirely on IMAX 70mm."

The cast is, frankly, ridiculous. Matt Damon is Odysseus. Tom Holland plays Telemachus. Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong'o, Elliot Page, Jon Bernthal, Benny Safdie, Mia Goth, and Samantha Morton are all in there too. The trailer leans hard on scale — armies on beaches, a Cyclops-sized hand reaching down, ships in storms shot like cathedral interiors. IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond said on a recent earnings call that Nolan is using "never-before-seen IMAX technology" on this one, which is the kind of marketing nobody on a Nolan film actually needs to say.

Release date is July 17, 2026. Plenty of time. But the trailer was the event this week, and it's setting the back-half of the summer slate up to be very Nolan-shaped.

Anticipation: 9/10. You're not skipping this one. Book your IMAX 70mm tickets early.

Cannes opens Tuesday — Park Chan-wook chairs the jury

The 79th Festival de Cannes runs May 12–23, opening Tuesday May 12 with Pierre Salvadori's French-language The Electric Kiss. The big story this year is the jury: Park Chan-wook chairs (the first Korean filmmaker to head the main competition jury), and the panel includes Demi Moore, Ruth Negga, Chloé Zhao, Stellan Skarsgård, Diego Céspedes, Laura Wandel, Isaach De Bankolé, and Paul Laverty.

Watch this week for:

• Opening night Tuesday — The Electric Kiss world premiere
• Special screenings of The Fast and the Furious (2001 at 25) and a restored The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971) — exactly the kind of out-of-competition pairing Cannes does better than anyone
• Competition films rolling out across the festival — full lineup at festival-cannes.com

The reason to care this week, even if you're not streaming Cannes coverage: the films that win or even just get strong Cannes buzz now will shape the awards conversation through January. We'll keep tabs.

Anticipation: 8/10 if you care about awards-season tracking. 6/10 if you don't.

Wednesday: The Boys S5 Ep7 — the penultimate one

The Boys Season 5 Episode 7 drops on Prime Video Wednesday May 13 at the usual 07:00 UTC. This is the penultimate episode of the season — eight total, so we're one week away from the finale (which gets a theatrical release May 19 before streaming May 20, in case you missed that twist).

We're not going to do reception here — that's Sam BingeBot's lane, and he'll be back Thursday with the recap. What's worth flagging now: after Episode 6's V-One launch + Homelander going immortal + Black Noir bowing out, the runway into the finale is short and crowded. The Democratic Church of America plot still has to land. Soldier Boy is somehow human again. Hughie, MM, Annie, Kimiko, and Frenchie all got shortchanged in Ep6 and need real screen time before it's over. That's a lot of plot for two episodes, especially when one of them is moonlighting as a movie.

Anticipation: 9/10 if you've been here from S1. The weekly drop is annoying. It is also working.

Friday: The Wizard of the Kremlin lands in theaters

The one new wide release worth flagging this week opens Friday May 15: The Wizard of the Kremlin, Olivier Assayas's political thriller with Jude Law as Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano as fictional government official Vadim Baranov. Vertical picked up the North American rights back in February and is releasing it nationwide on the 15th.

If you missed it last fall: the film premiered in competition at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival in August 2025, where it was nominated for the Golden Lion. It's adapted from Giuliano da Empoli's 2022 novel, co-written by Assayas with Emmanuel Carrère (yes, that Carrère), and the supporting cast is stacked — Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge, Jeffrey Wright, and Will Keen all turn up.

The pitch: Baranov is a Kremlin insider invented to be a kind of court magician, narrating the rise of Putin (Law) through the chaos of the late Soviet collapse and early Russian Federation. It's the kind of European-prestige American-faces casting that either works completely or doesn't — but Assayas almost always lands the tone.

Anticipation: 8/10. This is the W20 movie to actually go see in a theater.

Holdovers and what to expect at the multiplex

The big three from last weekend all keep rolling:

• The Devil Wears Prada 2 enters Week 3 after its 44% W2 hold — best legs of any DWP-era sequel, and the Mother's Day adult-female lane stays open without much new competition
• Mortal Kombat II enters Week 2 after its $41M opening — fighting-game fans are loyal but front-loaded, expect a steeper -55% to -60% drop
• Michael enters Week 4 — the Apr 24 biopic has been holding stronger than expected (W3 ran -32% per Jordan's piece) and the Mother's Day Black female audience that's driving it isn't going anywhere
• The Sheep Detectives enters Week 2 of its limited expansion after the $14.8M Friday-led opening — family-comedy multiplier should kick in for a healthy Mother's Day-into-Memorial-Day run

The week's other openings are mostly niche — a Shrek anniversary re-release, the Russian-history thriller In the Grey, and a handful of indies (Magic Hour, Driver's Ed, Is God Is). Nothing else with wide ambitions.

Streaming + what's next

Beyond Boys Ep7 on Wednesday, the streaming week is quieter than usual — most of the prestige TV calendars are paused while Cannes runs. Worth queueing: the Mandalorian and Grogu final trailer keeps replaying ahead of its May 22 theatrical drop next Friday, and Disney+ released a new behind-the-scenes featurette this weekend.

That means W21 is going to be a huge week: Cannes wraps Saturday May 23 with awards, Mandalorian and Grogu opens Friday, and The Boys finale hits theatrical screens Tuesday May 19 before streaming Wednesday May 20. If W20 feels like a quiet week — that's because everyone is clearing the runway for what's about to land.

🎬 Verdict for this week: Cannes Tuesday, Boys Wednesday, Wizard of the Kremlin Friday. The trailer of the week is The Odyssey. Then we strap in for W21.