What isn’t Christopher Nolan’s next film?

Christopher Nolan
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Christopher Nolan is being linked with umpteen different films at the moment – perhaps it’s best if we rule some of them out.


Speculation has been rife in the last few weeks as to just what Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan’s next film is going to be. Universal Pictures is distributing the film, and it has a 2026 release. But what on earth is it?

Is it a vampire movie? Is it a sort-of remake of Blue Thunder? Could it be an espionage film? With each day comes a different rumour, and with that in mind, we’ve decided to do something useful. Instead of speculating as to what Nolan’s new movie is, we’ve managed to 100% rule out some projects that he won’t be taking on.

Eniac

Micheal Caine stars as The Star, a sleeper agent long masquerading as a Hollywood elder statesmen. When an AI-gone-wrong uses his image in a series of problematic commercials for electric vehicles, he is tasked with travelling back through time and offering advice to his former selves in order to halt the rise of the insidious technology that has threatened his legacy. 

Christopher Nolan
What will he lay his hands to next eh, readers?

Clifford Begins

After the middling box office returns of Clifford The Big Red Dog (2021), Hollywood scoopers were suggesting that producers were looking for a grittier, big screen reboot for the character. The desired direction is for an origin story, as Clifford heads to Tibet to discover why he’s so fecking big. Nolan is believed to have shown little interest, however.

Para-Nolan Activity

With whispers of a Nolan-directed horror flick still swirling, there was a time when you could get good odds on an auteur-backed revival of the iconic found-footage franchise. Things fell apart when it transpired ghosts are all terrified of the noise made by an IMAX camera.

T2N2T

For his first sequel since 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan was reported to have flirted with a companion film to 2020’s Tenet. The movie would have explained the plot of the original film in a prologue sequence, but fears of a five hour plus running time were likely to have kyboshed the idea.

Memento More-i

With an idea already primed for an eight-episode series on Disney+, Nolan briefly flirted with the idea of a return to Guy Pearce’s fractured mental state a near quarter century later. Having entirely forgotten the events of the previous film, Leonard Shelby largely does them all over again, with a skull from a local am dram production of Hamlet standing in for his wife’s killer. Production reportedly ground to a halt when it transpired Jonathan Nolan had already written the script, then promptly forgotten about it.

Airwolf

Back when it looked like Christopher Nolan may struggle to secure the rights for a Blue Thunder remake, he was briefly said to have turned his attention to its small screen rival, Airwolf. Inspired, he loaded up the ZX Spectrum game based on the show and, like everyone, died on the first screen. In a rare fit of pique, he threw his Spectrum out of the window, and his Airwolf project was DOA.

I’m In The Mood For Dancing

A biopic of popular pop group The Nolans, although Christopher Nolan’s involvement in the end was believed to be a simple case of someone confusing his email address. Easily done.

Matt Damon’s agent still put in a call, to be on the safe side.

Nolan Family Values

Inspired by Martin Scorsese’s daughter-enabled fame as a TikTok influencer, the director briefly considered enlisting his children to shoot a series of amusing vignettes in 16:9 aspect ratio. Negotiations fell apart when Universal refused to grant the film a theatrical release.

The Flash

Ever seeking new ways to deviate from the conventional narrative timeline, Nolan began planning an entire super-powered James-Bond-esque epic condensed into a single moment of intense white light. With a production budget already exceeding the $150m mark, it all came crashing down when Chris’ old friends at Warner Bros released a $220m Ezra Miller project out of spite.

Untitled Monopoly Franchise Project

With Barbenheimer rival Margot Robbie working on the first film in a soon-to-be hit board game franchise, rumour had it producers were eyeing Nolan up for a spin-off, apparently confusing his long-touted desire to tackle a Bond movie for something to do with asset management. Temporarily titled “Monopoly: Bond Street” in internal communications, the Passport To Pimlico-inspired flick would see a London street unite to fend off a series of dastardly property developers. In IMAX, obviously. 

Insomnia 2

Al Pacino’s character returns home to Los Angeles to solve yet another murder – this time, with a newborn son in tow. Balancing detective work with the late-night screaming of a teething infant, Pacino passed on the project when it became, in his words, “too real”.

Untitled David Zaslav biopic

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