Almost all of Hollywood’s biggest and most well-known directors have taken their talents to streaming, even those who are staunch defenders of the theatrical experience. Quentin Tarantino re-edited The Hateful Eight into a Netflix miniseries, while Martin Scorsese moved from the platform’s The Irishman onto AppleTV+’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
However, one filmmaker who seems very unlikely to helm a project that’ll never see the inside of a cinema is Christopher Nolan, who gave Warner Bros. a very public dressing down over the decision to send the studio’s entire slate of 2021 releases to HBO Max on the same day they arrived on the big screen, while he constantly battled behind the scenes to ensure that last summer’s Tenet played exclusively in theaters.
Nolan even said he’d never make a movie for Netflix in 2017, before backtracking slightly and apologizing for being impolite. There’s been widespread talk that his longstanding relationship with Warner Bros. may be coming to an end, and in a new interview Netflix’s head of original film Scott Stuber says he’s going to do everything in his power to entice the Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet creator to the platform.
“If and when he comes up with his new movie, it’s about can we be a home for it and what would we need to do to make that happen. He’s an incredible filmmaker. I’m going to do everything I can. In this business I’ve learned you need to have zero ego. I get punched and knocked down and get back up.”
Netflix have inked deals with Scorsese, Michael Bay, David Fincher, Zack Snyder, the Russo brothers, Steven Spielberg and more over the years, but you can’t argue that Christopher Nolan would be their biggest get yet, if only because he’s remained so committed to theaters, even as the unstoppable rise of the streaming service has become impossible to ignore. Whenever Nolan reveals what his next directorial effort is going to be, you can bet Netflix will be going out of their way to win the ensuing bidding war.
