Christopher Nolan is having a moment in the sun. His nuclear biopic Oppenheimer may have failed to overcome the awesome power of Barbie, but a $174 million international opening weekend is nothing to sniff at – especially for a three-hour historical biopic.
After Oppenheimer, many are looking ahead to Nolan’s next project. At this point, he’s able to get any movie greenlit he chooses, though some fans are holding out hope he’d sprinkle a little of that Dark Knight trilogy magic on an existing IP. Hopes were raised just days ago when he teased that he’d jump at the chance to direct a Bond movie.
That being said, a door may have opened in a galaxy far, far away. In an interview with Hugo Travers, he was given some rapid-fire questions to which he could answer “Yes,” “No,” or “Pass” (indicating that he doesn’t want to answer that right now). When Nolan was asked if he wanted to direct another superhero movie he said “No,” but when he was asked about Star Wars, he said “Pas.s”
This is a long way from confirmation, but at minimum it means it’s possible. A Christopher Nolan Star Wars is difficult to imagine, and we have no doubt the strong-willed filmmaker would butt heads with Lucasfilm executives over story, tone and characters.
The fan reaction on Reddit indicates this would be a dream come true, though as one neatly summarizes: “Nolan needs complete control of his films. Disney needs complete control of their films. These two things are not compatible.”
But, if the company wanted a heavyweight director to bring some new credibility to Star Wars (perhaps doing the equivalent of Andor on the big screen) it’d be hard to find a better candidate. Whether this will ever happen is anyone’s guess, though we’d kill to see it.