Christopher Nolan Almost Directed Troy — And You’ll Be Glad He Walked Away
Thank a scrapped 2000s Superman and a near detour to Troy: those twists steered Christopher Nolan into Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises—changing DC history for the better.
Here is a fun little domino effect: Christopher Nolan only ended up making his Dark Knight trilogy because Warner Bros. pulled the plug on a different superhero project and, in the process, bumped him off Troy. Weird chain reaction, but it checks out.
The canceled cape movie that changed Nolan's career
In a new Empire interview, Nolan says he was actually hired by Warner Bros. to direct Troy. That movie had originally been developed by Wolfgang Petersen, but when the studio decided not to move forward with Petersen's superhero film, he asked for Troy back. Nolan stepped aside, and that twist of fate nudged him toward Batman.
"I was originally hired by Warner Bros. to direct Troy. Wolfgang [Petersen] had developed it, and so when the studio decided not to proceed with his superhero movie [Batman Vs Superman], he wanted it back."
So to clear up the clunky headline version: it was not a stand-alone Superman movie. It was Petersen's Batman vs Superman. When that stalled, he reclaimed Troy, and Nolan suddenly had an opening. That opening turned into Batman Begins, then The Dark Knight, then The Dark Knight Rises. If Petersen's mash-up had gone ahead, Nolan might have been staging sieges in sandals instead of reinventing Gotham, and we probably do not get one of the defining modern superhero trilogies.
The trilogy that happened instead
Nolan's run goes 2005's Batman Begins, 2008's The Dark Knight, and 2012's The Dark Knight Rises. Those three films are still the gold standard for a lot of DC fans, with The Dark Knight most often singled out as the peak.
The Troy detour you might have forgotten
Troy hit theaters in 2004 with a script by David Benioff and a loaded cast: Brad Pitt as Achilles, Eric Bana as Hector, Orlando Bloom as Paris, Diane Kruger as Helen, Brian Cox as Agamemnon, Sean Bean as Odysseus, Brendan Gleeson as Menelaus, Rose Byrne as Briseis, and Peter O'Toole as Priam, among others. It was a big win for Warner Bros. and Wolfgang Petersen at the box office, pulling in 497.4 million dollars worldwide. Critics were split, but it did land a Best Costume Design nomination at the 77th Academy Awards.
Where Nolan went from there
Past Batman, Nolan's filmography is basically a greatest-hits playlist: Following (1998), Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002), The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), Tenet (2020), and Oppenheimer (2023). Next up is The Odyssey, currently set to open in U.S. theaters on July 17, 2026.