Ever since Christopher Nolan won the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director for his blockbuster historical drama “Oppenheimer” (four words you rarely read together), the entire film industry has been closely monitoring the filmmaker's next move. Nolan's creative whims have always sparked speculation within the business, but this time it wasn't just about what he would do next, but where he would do it.
For nearly a decade, this wasn't a concern. After his neo-noir masterpiece “Memento” turned him into one of Hollywood’s hottest young directors, Christopher Nolan took his first studio job, “Insomnia,” at Warner Bros., and called the big house in Burbank the your home nearby. a decade ago. What changed? The Covid pandemic and WB head of production Jason Kilar's decision in 2020, through his Project Popcorn initiative, to release the company's entire programming for the year, day and date, in theaters and on its streaming service. streaming HBO Max.
Nolan criticized Kilar and WB at the time, saying, “Some of our industry's biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the biggest movie studio and woke up to find they were working for the worse. streaming service.” Nolan’s 2020 film “Tenet” had a full theatrical release after multiple delays on August 26 of that year, but public reticence to sit in theaters as millions continued to die from Covid hurt its box office.
Regardless of Kilar's reasoning, Nolan was furious and took his next project, “Oppenheimer,” to Universal. After Kilar's dismissal, the head of Warner Bros. Discovery's David Zaslav and the studio's new production heads, Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, mounted a charm offensive to bring Nolan back into the fold. Unfortunately, last week Nolan announced that he would make his next feature at Universal. Does this mean the director is done with WB for good?
Will WB be able to lure Nolan back home?
Nolan swears that's not the case. In a November 2023 interview with Variety, the filmmaker said that his animosity with his former home studio was “water under the bridge” and that he was “absolutely” open to returning to WB under new management. But he's sticking with Universal for now (with a project believed to be an adaptation of Patrick McGoohan's classic sci-fi TV series “The Prisoner,” which he's been developing for years), and if a recent report is to be believed True, it's not hard to see why.
According to industry outlet Puck, De Luca convinced Zaslav to give Nolan a seven-figure check as a sign of good faith. Really? That doesn't sound like De Luca, who has long been known for being one of the most talent-friendly executives in the business (dating back to his protective shepherding of PT Anderson's career at New Line in the late 1990s); If he wanted to send a message of goodwill to Nolan, a seven-figure donation to Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project would have made more sense. Or perhaps he could have convinced Zaslav to release finished but shelved tax-avoidance films like “Batgirl” and “Coyote vs. Acme”. Puck also added that neither De Luca nor Abdy had access to Nolan's film script before Universal acquired it.
De Luca and Abdy managed to close deals with auteurs like Anderson and M. Night Shyamalan, but Zaslav's presence at the top is still a cause for concern for many A-list directors. Some directors think he is untrustworthy, so they are waiting to see how he will handle Anderson's latest film, especially after the historic failure of his personally approved “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Zaslav has a reputation for pettiness and pride. Factor in Nolan's reportedly warm relationship with Universal head Donna Langley, and the timing just didn't seem right for a WB homecoming.
