Epic: The Musical Movie Is Coming

The famed internet phenomenon, Epic, is getting an animated film adaptation: Epic: The Musical Movie. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and creator-composer Jorge Rivera-Herrans have teamed up for the film, which will bring the viral musical retelling of Homer’s “The Odyssey” to theaters.

Keep reading to learn more about the film and the production behind it.

Jerry Bruckheimer is Making An Animated Epic: The Musical Movie

Hot on the heels of KPop Demon Hunters, we’re about to get another animated musical film.

That’s because the scrappy, internet-native, experimental play, Epic: The Musical, is being adapted into an animated film by its creator, famed composer/songwriter Jorge Rivera-Herrans. Also, he brought in blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer and his old friends at Atlantic Records to produce the film.

To reiterate, this modern adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey is headed for the big screen.

What’s Been Announced So Far

According to The Hollywood Reporter and Billboard, Bruckheimer is developing the animated Epic: The Musical movie with Rivera-Herrans and Atlantic Music Group’s Kevin Weaver. He also brought in Chad Oman, from his own Jerry Bruckheimer Films, to help him produce it.

Also, they described the project as in the “nascent stages,” with plans to take it to studios and streamers for presentations via CAA– potentially as soon as next week.

In other words:

• No release date (yet).
• No studio or streamer attached publicly (yet).
• No cast or animation team announced (yet).
• No confirmation on whether it will be a theatrical release, a streaming original, or some hybrid rollout.

If You’re New: What Epic: The Musical Actually Is

Epic: The Musical is a serialized musical retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey, updated for modern audiences. Rivera-Herrans began the project while he was a student at the University of Notre Dame in 2021.

 Since then, he’s been documenting the writing and production process on TikTok. Along the way, his fans fueled the hype by sharing animatics, fan art, and their reactions to each chapter. He also hired a few of his followers for casting roles.

So far, he has released nine chapters, or “sagas”, which ran from 2022 to December 2024. Along the way, the project blew up into a streaming monster, with more than 4 billion global streams and over 7 billion short-form views. Not bad for an indie production.

Why Animation Works for Epic: The Musical Movie

Now, the funniest part about this news is that the Epic community has been demanding it for years. Fan-made animatics and animated shorts already exist that map character designs, fight choreography, and emotional beats to Rivera-Herran’s songs. In other words, the audience has been watching Epic: the Musical Movie in their heads the whole time.

Also, animation solves many problems at once. The Odyssey is a tour of impossible events. It has:

• Storms that feel sentient
• Islands that don’t play by physics
• Monsters that should be terrifying and iconic
• Gods who can switch the vibe of a scene with a finger snap.

Sure, live action can do it. But animation can do it without uncanny-valley compromises or a budget that turns every set piece into a studio note. Plus, because Epic is a musical, animation can lean into stylization, music-video transitions, heightened facial acting, reality-bending staging, without trying to justify it as “realistic.”

What Bruckheimer + Atlantic Might Mean for the Film

Jerry Bruckheimer’s name carries a very specific promise: scale. Even his character-driven projects move fast, hit hard, and look expensive. However, Epic the Musical Movie is his first time with animation, which makes the choice even more interesting.

That’s because it suggests the team doesn’t see Epic as a niche “internet musical”. It’s a four-quadrant musical event that lives alongside bigger studio titles.

Meanwhile, Atlantic Records’ involvement, via President Kevin Weaver, means the soundtrack will be similarly epic. That’s because Atlantic has been with Epic since the beginning, handing all of its physical releases and merchandising.

Let me repeat that. We have a major record company producing a feature film. That never happens. That alone makes me interested in this film. I want to see how the soundtrack will drive the story, because you know it will.

So… Will Epic: The Musical Movie Cover the Whole Story?

Now for the big question: With nine sagas’ worth of story and songs, Epic isn’t a tidy 95-minute package. While there’s no official word on the structure yet, there are a few ways this could go.

The movie could be:

• A single feature that condenses the narrative
• A longer animated event film
• The first movie in a planned run that breaks the story into multiple chapters.

We also don’t know which studio or streamer will distribute it or which animation studio they’re chasing. And most importantly, we don’t know whether the film will retain the original vocal cast, recast with marquee names, or use a hybrid approach.

Sure, animated musicals routinely stack celebrity voice casts, but Epic is unusual. Its voices are already part of the brand.

Why Does This Announcement Hit Right Now

As I mentioned earlier, the Epic: the Musical Movie isn’t being made in a vacuum, but it goes beyond the current popularity of musical films. We’re in a Hollywood “Odyssey” era.  There are multiple retellings of the tale in the works, including Christopher Nolan’s live-action retelling, slated for July 17, 2026.

Hopefully, this kind of parallel attention will pique casual audiences’ curiosity about the original myth. For instance, one adaptation prompts people to search for the other, and the internet gets a whole new set of memes to remix.

Three Things That Could Make This Adaptation Legendary

1. A bold visual identity that doesn’t play it safe. The internet fell for Epic because of its theater sincerity and anime intensity. The film should lean into that.
2. A commitment to musical storytelling. Epic works because of its soundtrack. If the adaptation changes it, it risks losing what made the project special in the first place.
3. A nod to the fandom. The fan content wasn’t just noise. Even a small acknowledgment would show that the movie came from the internet.

Final Thoughts

However, for now, we can only speculate what they will do with the animated Epic: The Musical movie. We have no release date, no confirmed distributor, and plenty of creative decisions left to be made. We don’t even have a trailer. All we know is that it is in good hands.

But that’s just my take. Now, what’s yours? Post your thoughts in the forums or comments below.