Christopher Nolan and streaming services haven't always seen eye to eye – but that hasn't stopped Netflix film chief Scott Stuber from voicing his desire to work with the director and release his next movie on 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," Stuber said in an interview with Variety. "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."
Nolan has always felt very strongly about theatrical releases for movies – he even helped the film stock industry after recruiting fellow directors including Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams to get studios to agree to purchase a set amount of film stock per year.
"Netflix has a bizarre aversion to supporting theatrical films," Nolan told IndieWire back in 2017. "They have this mindless policy of everything having to be simultaneously streamed and released, which is obviously an untenable model for theatrical presentation. So they’re not even getting in the game, and I think they’re missing a huge opportunity."
He backtracked slightly when pressed on the issue, though: "I should have been more polite," the director admitted to Variety a few months later. "I said what I believe, but I was undiplomatic in the way I expressed it." However, nearly four years later, he was also vocal about Warner Bros.' decision to simultaneously release its 2021 slate of movies in theaters and on HBO Max.
Nolan's last movie was 2020's Tenet and he's also known for directing movies like The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, and Dunkirk, all of which were released by Warner Bros. – the studio has distributed all of his movies since 2002's Insomnia.
However, with Netflix working with Nolan's peers like Martin Scorsese for 2019's The Irishman, as well as filmmakers like David Fincher and Noah Baumbach who have signed exclusive deals with the streamer recently, who knows what the future holds for Netflix and Nolan.
While we wait for Nolan's next project to arrive on the big – or small – screen, make sure you've caught up with all the best movies of 2020 first.
