Nolan Already Working on Next Film, Praises ‘La La Land’
Recently minted Oscar winner Christopher Nolan is already busy writing his next film, Matt Belloni mentioned in his Puck newsletter a few days ago.
As usual for Nolan, the project is surrounded by a thick veil of secrecy. Variety reported around that time that the two working theories are either a new, original script altogether, or he’ll revisit the remake of the mystery-thriller The Prisoner. Nolan had been attached to this reimagining of the 1960s TV series created by and starring Patrick McGoohan back in 2009, but he moved on to other projects, in part because of AMC releasing their own The Prisoners.
Nolan has pretty much carte blanche at this point and more than ever before. After being in business with WB for years, he eventually departed the studio in 2020 after the decision to dump the entire studio’s 2021 lineup on Max day-and-date. For Oppenheimer, he found a great partner in Donna Langley and Universal Pictures, and honestly, it’s a matter of time before it’s announced that the two will be working together again.
Universal did everything right: from giving Oppenheimer the blockbuster treatment Nolan asked for, to finally earning him the two Oscars he most desired (Director and Picture), to extending a near-$100M check (!) That was due to salary, box office compensations, and his two Oscars. Though Nolan did get in business with WB again for the theatrical re-release of Tenet a couple of weeks before Dune: Part Two came out, it’s unlikely that that relationship will be fully reinstated, at least for his next film — as much as David Zaslav would love that.
L to R: Dylan Arnold is Frank Oppenheimer and Matt Damon is Leslie Groves in OPPENHEIMER, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
In other Nolan news, if you’ve tuned into social media at any point during the past couple of months, chances are you’ve seen people sharing quotes from the filmmaker praising this or that movie. He seems to love all of them! (He probably does, by all accounts he’s even a big Fast & Furious fan.) But a recent one caught my eye, as I’m a particularly big fan of this one.
Per World of Reel, Nolan is quoted in the upcoming book The Nolan Variations by Tom Shone as saying:
“‘La La Land’, to me, is an extraordinary film. I saw it three or four times, it’s just an amazing piece of directing, and I don’t usually like musicals.”
La La Land is the 2016 Oscar-winning film from director Damien Chazelle, which is already in my top 10 movies of all time. Is that a little premature, given it came out so recently? Yes, it is, but it’s my list and I make the rules. Though Nolan’s praise isn’t something that makes it all the more special to me, in part because he’s been applauding so many other films recently, it’s still something I wanted to share with our readers!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
