The 1983 helicopter action film Blue Thunder is said to be the inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s next film – at least according to the latest rumour circulating.
Speculation regarding Christopher Nolan’s next project is really starting to ramp up with rumours emerging, being debunked and then replaced, almost as quickly as we can cover them. It’s been a week since it was officially confirmed that the British filmmaker would be following up the incredible critical and commercial success of last year’s Oppenheimer by once again partnering with Universal. We also got a release date for the next Nolan project: 17th July, 2026.
With Nolan projects being what they are, a typical veil of secrecy surrounds the movie but fear not, the ever-dependent rumour mill has ground into action and in the seven days or so that have followed, we’ve had series of reports offer differing threads of speculation as to what the British filmmaker’s next project will be.
First it was The Prisoner, a remake of the 1960s TV show, a rumour partly founded via Nolan’s previously expressed interest in the source material. Given that Matt Damon is in line to work with Nolan again, some folks have pointed out just how right the actor would be for the role played by Patrick McGoohan in the original UK TV series.
While that rumour was then debunked in some quarters, another story quickly sprung up claiming that Nolan was actually working on a horror project, an idea that really connected with online film fans. World of Reel’s sources have quickly debunked that rumour too, however, and so we arrive at a third possible direction for the project in just under a week. And honestly, they’re getting wonderfully left-field. The latest speculation suggests that Nolan is making a futuristic action movie partly inspired by the 80s helicopter flick, Blue Thunder, which starred Roy Scheider and was directed by John Badham.
This time, the rumour has emerged from Reddit (via Dark Horizons) and claims that ‘Nolan and his team have been in touch with the NYPD Aviation Unit about shooting a New York-based futuristic action film about a helicopter pilot cop who heads up the Aviation Unit.’ The filmmaker has apparently given everybody involved in the production a ‘high-quality’ copy of the 1983 film to watch, as a pre-production assignment.
We obviously have to take this story with the largest grain of salt imaginable, but it’s fun to speculate on where this could all go. Nolan is of course famous for embracing practical filmmaking so any kind of helicopter action movie would have to replicate, if not improve on some of the incredible whirlybird action sequences that we saw the Mission: Impossible team pull off at the end of Fallout. And staging those set pieces amid steel and glass canyons that would resemble New York City? It’s an exciting thought, to say the very least. (Blue Thunder’s aerial set-pieces, with the titular helicopter sawing police cars in half with a minigun and weaving between skyscrapers, is no slouch either.)
If we do hear details confirming any of this (or if another rumour supplants this one), we’ll let you know.
