The line from many fans and pundits, at least online, is that Christopher Nolan, currently promoting his “Oppenheimer” movie is that he will eventually direct a James Bond film. I’ve always felt that was wrong. Nolan got a lot of his James Bond ya yas out when directing “Inception,” many of the action sequences are influenced by James Bond films, and Nolan said as much at the time.
READ MORE: Christopher Nolan Doesn’t Refute The Idea Of A ‘Star Wars’ Project In The Future
Plus, there’s the fact that Nolan can make and do whatever he wants, free of the obligations and studio notes of what a franchise would bring. Nolan recently didn’t want to say whether he would want to direct a “Star Wars” film or not. Still, one imagines the true answer is much like the one he gives here for James Bond: he loves the franchise. It would be amazing in theory, but directing a piece of I.P. that you don’t own becomes incredibly difficult because you have to answer to the studio, the fans, and the obligations of the franchise.
Asked whether he would want to direct a James Bond film, a question that comes up every few years on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Nolan began positively and noted Bond’s influence on his past movies and career.
“The influence of those movies in my filmography is embarrassingly apparent. It would be an amazing privilege to do one,” he said.
But there is that big but as mentioned above. There are a lot of “constraints” to deal with, and Nolan is a filmmaker with the privilege of essentially working without constraints.
“At the same time, when you take on a character like that, you’re working with a particular set of constraints,” he continued. “It has to be the right moment in your creative life where you can express what you want to express and really burrow into something within the appropriate constraints because you would never want to take on something like that and do it wrong.”
Reading between the lines, that sounds like, “I would only direct James Bond if I had free rein,” and the Broccolis are notorious for not giving filmmakers free rein on the Bond films.
Nolan also suggested that there’s also a huge personal responsibility, much like “the kind of responsibility I felt very much taking on Batman.”
Nolan obviously directed a Batman trilogy and was given, if not free rein, a lot of latitude. Still, perhaps the between-the-lines reality is that he would never return to those kinds of obligations again.
“You wouldn’t want to take on a film without being fully committed to what you bring to the table creatively. So as a writer, casting, everything – it’s a full package,” he said. “You’d have to be really needed and wanted in terms of bringing the totality of what you bring to a character. Otherwise, I’m very happy to be first in line to see whatever they do.”
There it is again, no? That same notion: If I can do what I want with a franchise, cool; otherwise, I’ll be happy to enjoy it as a fan. And I would bet any money in the world that Nolan feels the same about “Star Wars” and any other franchise he would be interested in.
One should note this applies to many other major filmmakers too. People like David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino are often offered projects like this, but they’re in a privileged position that they don’t have to bother with anyone’s rules and constraints (Fincher had some preliminary conversations with Lucasfilm about when Disney bought the company, but basically came to the same conclusion). Tarantino has also noted that he stopped getting studio offers once his career took off; the studios knew he was a filmmaker that generated his own material (though the offers came back briefly when “Death Proof” flopped).
“Oppenheimer” is in theaters now (read our review), and if I’m a betting man, you’ll never see Christopher Nolan direct a Bond film in your lifetime unless the franchise becomes so destitute—which seems unlikely—the producers are desperate enough to agree to his terms.