

A Star Wars producer + Lithuanian animators = the most cursed Odyssey you've never seen.
HBO aired “The Animated Odyssey” as a four-part miniseries in the US in 2000. It was originally produced by Vilanima Studios of Lithuania and first aired in Russia as a feature-length film in 1998 under the title The Destruction of Troy and the Adventures of Odysseus (Разрушение Трои и путешествие Одиссея). As a series it was divided into half-hour episodes including “The Trojan Horse,” “The Cyclops,” “Circe, Hades and the Sirens,” and “Odysseus Returns.” The production was supervised by original Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz & took three years to complete, was lavish & ambitious, & was intended to appeal to a wide audience that included school-age children and young adults. The narrative presented was more detailed than other animated treatments of the Odyssey and stayed closer to traditional storyline. The English-dubbed version of the film is nowhere to be found online or streaming, only the Russian version and a modern Greek version are available.
Production
Gary Kurtz's weird post-Star Wars pivot.
Practical Effects
Hand-drawn ambition on a shoestring.

Director
Gary Kurtz
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was Gary Kurtz's final produced film before his death — the man who fought Lucas over Star Wars' direction ended his career on a Lithuanian animated Odyssey.
The English dub vanished entirely; only bootleg VHS recordings from 2000 HBO airings exist in private collections. It's genuinely unstreamable.
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