Grok Imagine posts a seven-minute AI-made Odyssey episode

In July Musk said Grok Imagine would produce a full-length, historically accurate film of Homer’s poem before the end of 2026, Variety notes. The episode lands while Christopher Nolan’s live-action version, made largely with practical sets, is a box-office hit, and after Musk publicly attacked that film’s casting. No statement came with the episode, Variety adds.

TechCrunch’s writer granted that a few shots could pass for real sailors on a real sea. The rest, in his account, felt airless, and the voice-over backstory runs long.

The raw footage is cheap to generate. On xAI’s API, Grok Imagine Video 1.5 costs $0.25 a second at 1080p on our price sheet, read 23 September 2026, so seven minutes, about 420 seconds, comes to roughly $105 for one pass.

At about $15 a generated minute, rendering a seven-minute film several times over costs a few hundred dollars on xAI’s API, which leaves writing and direction, the parts TechCrunch’s writer faulted, as the real cost of a watchable episode.