Christopher Nolan got a little closer to directing James Bond 26 than first thought – but talks didn’t get very far. More here.
In spite of the fact that there’s no new movie in sight, the last week has seen the James Bond saga dominating the entertainment world headlines. The reason’s fairly obvious, given that the impasse between Eon Productions and Amazon MGM Studios – the co-owners of the franchise – has been broken. Broken thanks to the power of a reported $1bn paid by Amazon to producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson to relinquish the creative control they’ve held over 007.
Since then, and it’s only been a week, there’s been no shortage of further stories. In a new piece over at Variety, there’s fresh light on a previous rumour, and it seems the old cliché of there’s no smoke without fire proved correct.
It was back in 2021 that the rumour mill decided Christopher Nolan was a candidate to direct a James Bond movie, as he was deciding what project to commit to following 2020’s Tenet. It turns out, as per Variety, that he expressed interest in making a James Bond film at that stage, and this understandably led to Eon considering the idea.
The dealbreaker though was final cut. Barbara Broccoli has given none of her directors final cut on a James Bond film, and Christopher Nolan was no exception. Nolan is one of the few high profile filmmakers though who does get final cut on his pictures, and even though it’s not clear if the conversation got very far, the final cut issue was the breaking point.
Christopher Nolan instead opted to make Oppenheimer, and that worked out rather well for him: a near $1bn gross and Oscars too. In the meantime, there’s not been another James Bond film made, and now the decision of a director lies with Amazon MGM, and not Barbara Broccoli.
You can almost certainly still count Christopher Nolan out though, given that he’s just started filming his latest venture, The Odyssey. We wait and see who the rumour mill throws into the mix instead…
