While Oppenheimer was Christopher Nolan’s first biographical drama to hit the big screens, this wasn’t the Oscar-winner’s first time penning a script surrounding a real-life figure. Before changing the superhero landscape with The Dark Knight, the director had plans to make a biopic about the American aerospace engineer Howard Hughes, for which he even wrote a script.
But as the story goes, Nolan’s passion project never materialized as before the director could make his pitch, Martin Scorsese was already working on Hughes’ biopic, The Aviator. However, it wasn’t all in vain for Nolan, as his experience working on the script for his Howard Hughes biopic came in handy while penning Oppenheimer.
The Unmade Biopic Made Christopher Nolan’s Experience Penning Oppenheimer Easier
Speaking of the unmade biopic, Christopher Nolan deemed his script for the canned project the best he’d ever written. Moreover, instead of Leonardo DiCaprio, Nolan had Jim Carrey in mind for playing Hughes, stating Carrey was “born to play” the part. But despite losing the film to Martin Scorsese, Nolan’s experience crafting the script for the canned biopic made the process of penning the script for Oppenheimer much smoother.
Considering The Dark Knight director received a lot of insight on “how to view a person’s life in a thematic way,” it ended up contributing a lot to his script for the Oscar-winning biopic.
Nolan detailed (via Variety):
I cracked the script to my satisfaction, and that gave me a lot of insight on how to distill a person’s life and how to view a person’s life in a thematic way, so that the film is more than the sum of its parts. So, in some ways, the script, yes, it took me a few months, but it was really a culmination of 20 years of thinking.
While it’s a shame his biopic never materialized, as it would’ve suited Nolan’s style, Scorsese too didn’t drop the ball with the biopic, which stands as a testament to his versatility as a filmmaker.
Christopher Nolan Is Yet to Watch The Aviator
Even though Martin Scorsese‘s The Aviator was revered by fans and critics and scored 11 Oscar nods, Christopher Nolan is yet to watch the biopic. But his decision to not watch the film doesn’t have to do with its quality, as the scrapping of his project took a heavy emotional toll on the director, which makes sense, as he poured his soul into the script.
Nolan recalled:
It was very emotional to not get to make something I’d poured all that into.
Although it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see Nolan’s version of Hughes’ biopic, The Aviator remains one of the most unique films to come out from the duo of DiCaprio and Scorsese.
The Aviator is available to stream on Apple TV.
