What Is Christopher Nolan Up to After Oppenheimer? A Horror Film, He Says

Summary

• Throughout his extensive career, Christopher Nolan has made films in a variety of genres.
• Nolan's filmmaking style is difficult to understand because it is more emotionally provocative than didactic.
• The director is interested in horror because the genre has a lot in common with his style.

Just recently, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer won most of the major awards at the 77th BAFTAs, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. Naturally, fans of the film are now looking forward to seeing how it will fare at the upcoming 96th Academy Awards, with many expecting the biopic to repeat its recent success.

In addition to being the most celebrated and recognized film of 2023, Oppenheimer was also one of the most financially successful, grossing a staggering $960 million at the box office. More importantly for Christopher Nolan, who is known for creating expensive and lucrative blockbusters, the biopic became his third highest grossing film, surpassing Inception and Interstellar. It seems that there isn't a genre that the director can't successfully tackle. And horror might just be his next creative endeavor.

The Father of Elaborate Movies

Although Christopher Nolan is best known for creating high-budget blockbusters like his Dark Night trilogy, he's equally famous for creating narratively complex films that are difficult to understand. For example, many viewers find the ending of Inception, with its spinning top sequence, incomprehensible.

However, Nolan himself has often commented on this, saying that his films are more about making the audience feel a certain way than teaching them anything. Perhaps this is why the director is fascinated by the horror genre.

'I think horror films are very interesting because they depend on very cinematic devices. It's really about [provoking] a visceral response to things,' said Christopher Nolan, explaining why he would like to try his hand at making a movie in the genre in the future.

Nolan's Interest in Horror

So far, the revered director doesn't seem to have any specific plans to make a horror movie. After all, all movies are built around a story, and admittedly, Nolan hasn't yet found one that fascinates him enough to make a movie out of it.

Nevertheless, horror may be the genre that feels natural to him, because it's the genre that pushes the boundaries of cinematography, which the director has a penchant for.

'I think it's a very interesting genre from a cinematic point of view. It's also one of the few genres where – the studios make a lot of these films – and they're films that have a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction. They have a lot of qualities that Hollywood is generally very resistant to putting into films, but that's a genre where it's allowable,' Nolan added.

And indeed, ambiguity and Christopher Nolan's films are almost synonymous. So if he were to make a horror movie next, it would undoubtedly be a work of art like the rest of his creations.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter.