So Far, Musk's Grok 'Odyssey' Is One 7-Minute Episode With a Human Director

Musk promised a full-length, historically accurate film by year's end. Grok Imagine's Episode 1 runs 7 minutes, 12 seconds.

On Friday evening, Polymarket's X account told its followers that SpaceXSI had started releasing "fully Grok-generated episodes" of Homer's Odyssey. So far there's exactly one episode. It runs a little over seven minutes, and the post that premiered it credits a studio and a human director.

That premiere came from Grok Imagine, the video generator made by SpaceXAI, the Musk AI company formerly known as xAI, which now goes by SpaceXSI on X, according to Tesla North. The account posted the 432-second clip Friday afternoon as Episode 1 of a series and named its collaborators: Wonder Studios and director Dev Walker, who both specialize in generative-AI filmmaking, Mashable reported. Musk quote-posted it that night with a four-word caption. Grok Imagine's post has passed 5 million views, and Polymarket's relay a few hours later had 167,922 by Sunday, by X's own count.

People are passing it around because it's Musk's answer to Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey," and it's a slice of what he promised. In July, Musk wrote that "before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer," Rolling Stone reported.

The first installment covers the Greeks reaching Troy, and Odysseus is the only character who gets a name, according to Mashable, which also noted that every character is white. Rolling Stone pointed out that they all speak English, not Homeric Greek.

The promise grew out of months of Musk attacking Nolan's casting, mainly Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page as Sinon, Mashable reported. Those complaints leaned on historical accuracy, for a Helen who, in Greek myth, hatched from an egg. Nolan's film has since grossed more than $1.78 billion worldwide, Rolling Stone reported.

Polymarket had money on that one too. Its market on Nolan's opening weekend drew about $1.4 million in trades, and the top bracket, over $115 million, won. That's the yardstick Musk's seven minutes is being held against.

The word doing the heavy lifting in Polymarket's post is "fully." Earlier in the week, Tesla North reported, Grok Imagine posted a step-by-step guide to designing characters for AI video. Creators collect reference images on a Grok Imagine canvas, work out a look with Grok, polish the designs, then build props, backgrounds and other characters from them. Every step is something a person does, with Grok as the tool, and the Odyssey's credits name the person.

The replies under Grok Imagine's post are mostly an argument about craft. One camp is blunt: "soulless" and "wooden" were common complaints even among AI-tolerant commenters, Rolling Stone found. The other camp roots for Grok Imagine and still sounds like an editor's notes: too many fast cuts, trailer pacing, faces without emotional depth. Mashable's list of flaws was more technical, from teeth that are too perfect to weightless, watery hair to backgrounds that sharpen as they load.

There's no episode count yet and no date for Episode 2, according to Tesla North. MuskOmeter, a site that tracks Musk's pledges, puts the share he's kept at about 24 percent, according to Mashable's story on Yahoo, and he has about nine weeks left on this one.

The account's post did make one more offer. It asked commenters whether they'd like "a full breakdown of how it was done." That breakdown is the one episode that could settle what "fully" means.

Source: X, retrieved October 25, 2026. Other sources: yahoo.com, Rolling Stone, polymarket.com, teslanorth.com, X (2), X (3).