What’s next for Christopher Nolan after “Oppenheimer“? Variety reports that the director doesn’t have exact plans yet for his next film, but he’d consider making a horror movie, so long as the idea was “really exceptional.”
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Nolan talked about his love of the horror genre at an event at BFI last night in London. And the reasons Nolan admires horror so much will be obvious for fans of the director: they’re “visceral,” “have a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction,” and allows filmmakers to do things onscreen that Hollywood is typically “resistant to.” But those qualities also make a good horror difficult to make, and that’s why Nolan hasn’t made one.
“”Oppenheimer” has elements of horror in it definitely, as I think is appropriate to the subject matter. I think horror films are very interesting because they depend on very cinematic devices, it really is about a visceral response to things and so, at some point, I’d love to make a horror film,” Nolan told the BFI crowd. “But I think a really good horror film requires a really exceptional idea. And those are few and far between. So I haven’t found a story that lends itself to that. But 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 are films that have a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction. They have a lot of the qualities that Hollywood is generally very resistant to putting in films, but that’s a genre where it’s allowable.”
Nolan isn’t afraid to dabble in several different genres and sub-genres within one film, however. The director mentioned he utilized qualities of the heist genre for the second act of “Oppenheimer” while the film’s final hour cribs a lot from the courtroom drama. “The reason I settled on those two genres for those sections is they are mainstream genres in which dialogue, people talking, is inherently intense and interesting to an audience. That’s the fun thing with genre, you can play with a lot of different areas, where in a different type of film you really wouldn’t be allowed to,” Nolan said.
Last night’s conversation between Nolan and BBC presenter Francine Stock tackled all sorts of themes and topics from the director’s career, with Nolan going into detail about his creative process. BFI CEO Ben Roberts introduced the talks, and spoke about Nolan and his partner Emma Roberts visiting BFI’s National Archive earlier that day. Thanks to Nolan championing film over digital, the various clips shown during his talk with Stock were in 35mm, including a new restoration of Nolan’s 2000 film “Memento.”
Throughout the talk, Nolan spoke about various collaborations, including cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, composer Hans Zimmer, and the late actor Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in 2008’s “The Dark Knight.” Nolan’s wildly popular trilogy of Batman films was a hot topic all evening. When asked about the politics of “The Dark Knight Films,” Nolan responded, ““The intent was always to just be honest about presenting the things we were affected by, things we were worried about. Certainly when I look back at “Batman Begins,” there’s a heavy emphasis on terrorism, obviously, post 911. It wasn’t something we were consciously putting into the film. Certainly, the Joker from “The Dark Knight” is all about fear and anarchy and the fear of rules breaking down and what that will do to society. “The Dark Knight Rises” is very much fearful of fascism, demagoguery.”
But did Nolan drop any hints about his next film project? Sadly not, but with all that talk about horror, would it be too surprising for the director to make one? After the success of “Oppenheimer,” Nolan will want to make whatever he wants, and likely on his own time, especially if it wins Best Picture at the Oscars next month. Imagine that: Chris Nolan making a low-down horror movie to follow up his most critically successful film to date.