Despite Warner's golden offer, Christopher Nolan preferred to stay at Universal

His secret film with Tom Holland and Matt Damon will be made with the same team as Oppenheimer.

While his new “secret project” takes shape, Variety dedicates a long paper to the extraordinary journey of Christopher Nolanwhich strongly defends the release of films in cinemas, in the best possible conditions: filming on film, distribution in Imax… A model to follow?

In 2020, the release of Tenetthe blockbuster of Christopher Nolan's $200 million was the first major studio film to be released during the global Covid outbreak. In the summer, the president of Warner Bros., champion of the big screen experience, placed all her hopes of resuming activity on the spy thriller. Ann Sarnoff, former head of Entertainment, and Warner's director of cinema, Toby Emmerich, agreed to release it in theaters.

An operation which ultimately cost the studio dearly, so much so that when it came time to finance Oppenheimerthe filmmaker turned to a competitor, Universal, ending two decades of loyalty. Before that, a long history united the director with the studio, since Insomnia in 2002.

Christopher Nolan has left Warner Bros. for Universal: the conditions of the deal

Today, Warner's new directors for cinema, Michael DeLuca and Pamela Abdy, after the merger with Discovery in 2022 and the arrival at the head of the firm of David Zaslav, quicker to focus on VOD and streamingwould only be waiting for one thing: to collaborate again with Nolan. Nine months before their arrival, the director had left them and Universal finally hit the jackpot thanks to Oppenheimerwhich, let us remember, came close to a billion dollars in revenue during the summer of 2023. In an unequivocal gesture, Warner Bros immediately offered Nolan a seven-figure check, thus reimbursing the release costs of Tenetto try to do it “come home”.

But that's not what Christopher Nolan is warming himself with, says today the American site: “For the star director who lives in a small house in the Hollywood Hills and drives an old Honda, it's not money or a few million that will decide the future of his films,” they assure. It is at Universal that he will concoct his next project, still with his producer and wife Emma Thomas, under the leadership of Donna Langley. Portraited by the Sunday Times as “joyful and rebellious, fun and pragmatic”the Briton is currently one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. It draws its reputation in particular from having produced She Said on the Harvey Weinstein affair, perhaps the most engaged film on this scandal. She also supported Jordan Peele's socio-political thriller, Get Outcritically acclaimed.

According to Stephen Galloway, dean of the department at Chapman University (California), “Nolan what matters to him is: will the film have a proper release? Will it have the right marketing strategy? Will it get IMAX screens? And also: will it to be able to make exactly the movie he wants? These are all the things he got with Universal (for Oppenheimer). So why not go back?”

His Oscar victoryat the start of the year, will not contradict this specialist in American cinema…

The American site continues, regarding his new project which should be worn by Tom Holland and Matt Damon, and which will therefore be produced at Universal thanks to a certainly substantial budget, that Chris Nolan can afford this choice of studio, as he has obtained an important place in Hollywood.

He is in fact part of the ultra-restricted club of directors capable of attracting audiences to their name, and not by being at the helm of franchises, among whom we find Quentin Tarantino and James Cameron. Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese were also part of it before their profitability began to decline, without suffering a reduction in their budgets. The reboot West Side Story at $100M from Spielberg brought in $76M to Disney overall at the end of Covid, the article recalls, and Killers of The Flower Moon did not make as much profit as its budget of 215 million disbursed by Apple TV.

Few new generation filmmakers can measure up to such profitability calculations. Greta Gerwig and Ryan Coogler, both acclaimed by the new generation, can boast of historic hits exceeding one billion in revenue with barbie And Black Panther. But these are already well-established intellectual properties: neither of these two films are 100% original. Oppenheimer managed to achieve almost the same scores, with a historical film, very serious and talkative, developed around the “least bankable character in all of history”continues Galloway.

In the words of columnist Jeff Bock: “Nolan is an IP (intellectual property) in his own right. Among the most identified directors among the general public, he is at the top.”

For Chris Nolan, Oppenheimer's success opens up a “post-franchise world”