The Nolan family and cinema are truly a match made in heaven. While Christopher Nolan has proved himself to be one of the most prolific and innovative directors Hollywood has ever seen, his brother Jonathan Nolan has carved his own unique niche in the field while also having influenced a lot of his elder sibling’s thought processes.
The younger Nolan is credited with creating highly successful sci-fi series like Person of Interest and Westworld while also collaborating with the Oppenheimer director on many of his marquee projects. While talking about his upcoming drama series Fallout, the screenwriter went down memory lane to his childhood with his elder brother and compared him to Steven Spielberg in one aspect.
Jonathan Nolan Revealed A Commonality Between Christopher Nolan And Steven Spielberg
Screen writer and producer Jonathan Nolan is much more than just the sibling of famous director Christopher Nolan. Having played a significant part in The Prestige director’s massive success, the Person of Interest creator has held his own in the industry with many successful projects to his name.
Nolan’s next big project is the drama series Fallout which he adapted from the popular video game. The Academy Award nominee who has directed the first three episodes of the post-apocalyptic drama, sat down with Josh Horowitz in the Happy Sad Confused podcast to talk about the show.
In the course of the conversation, he also reminisced about his childhood with his Oscar-winning sibling and how movies were always in his destiny. He recalled some memorable experiences in which the Interstellar filmmaker would obsess over the camera given by their father to continuously make videos, which ultimately influenced him to fall in love with the craft.
Jonathan Nolan also compared his elder brother’s passion to that of Steven Spielberg by referring to the latter’s brilliant semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans. Similar to the Jurassic Park director’s early experiences, the Nolan brothers’ mother was the main driving force behind her elder son choosing this creative path.
“My earliest memories literally are of helping or hindering Chris making stop-motion movies in the basement. So film was always his thing.”
Jonathan Nolan confessed that while he did not initially believe that this profession was his destiny unlike his brother, it was fate that brought him back and ultimately took him down a journey that saw many wonderful collaborations with the Oscar winner.
How The Last Of Us Created An Easier Path For Jonathan Nolan’s Fallout
After Christopher Nolan’s dream year at the movies, it is his brother Jonathan Nolan’s time to take center stage. The screenwriter’s latest show Fallout will stream on Amazon Prime from April 11th and is already getting a lot of hype before its release.
Fallout is a post-apocalyptic drama based on a popular video game series that will see Justified actor Walton Goggins playing the challenging double role of a 200-year-old mutant killer called The Ghoul and a Western movie star named Cooper Howard.
The show which is expected to touch a chord with audiences, is looking at the massive success of The Last Of Us as inspiration. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter during promotions, Jonathan Nolan addressed questions about the poor quality of video game adaptations and how Pedro Pascal’s show changed this perception.
“I was delighted. The bar was not only not high, it was nonexistent — especially in the TV space. You would have people adapting a first-person game and a studio would be like, ‘So the show is going to have a first-person point of view.’ No, that’s a grammatical tick of the game, that’s not how you adapt it. It’s always nice to be the first one. But when somebody makes something as good as The Last of Us, it makes it easier, because suddenly everyone understands what’s possible”.
Nolan also believed that the current generation connected far more with video games than with comic books. This allowed creators like him to take the plunge and envision series based on these popular games that were being played worldwide.
Fallout will stream on April 11th, 2024 on Amazon Prime.
