Christopher Nolan has proven his filmmaking potential by presenting some outstanding films which are widely acclaimed globally. Initially gaining international recognition with Memento, his work in DC, The Dark Knight Trilogy is still praised to this date. He continued to showcase spectacular skills with several different projects and is now back again with Oppenheimer.
While the film is garnering much attention, it is quite a special project for him as it has links with his unmade biography that eventually became Leonardo DiCaprio’s $213M The Aviator film.
Christopher Nolan’s Unmade Biography Helped Oppenheimer Film
The upcoming film, Oppenheimer is based on the personal life and work of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, being played by Cillian Murphy. Playing opposite Murphy is Emily Blunt, who portrays his character’s wife with an ensemble cast including Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., and Florence Pugh among several others.
The 52-year-old director, Christopher Nolan in a new issue of Total Film opened up about how his upcoming film has fragments of his unmade biopic on Howard Hughes.
In the interview, he stated,
“When I wrote my Howard Hughes script, it was the first time I’d taken on a real-life figure, and tried working from a book, and tried to find a structural approach and a cinematic approach that would give you the experience of this guy’s life.”
Having already worked on Howard Hughes’s script, he knew how to construct a cinematic approach for his upcoming film.
He continued,
“I was very happy with that script. Obviously I did not get to test the theories, because I didn’t get to make the film. But in my mind, I go, ‘OK, I do know how to do this’.”
Check out the tweet here.
Christopher Nolan on how his unmade Howard Hughes biopic helped him for OPPENHEIMER:
“When I wrote my Howard Hughes script, it was the first time I’d taken on a real-life figure, and tried working from a book, and tried to find a structural approach and a cinematic approach that… pic.twitter.com/xLoPsbrVeh
— Christopher Nolan Art & Updates (@NolanAnalyst) May 29, 2023
He talked about how he was contended with the unmade film script at the time but it never came to fruition. However, his old work became a major push in making this project.
Howard Hughes Became Leonardo DiCaprio’s Character
While Nolan was unable to make his script a reality, Martin Scorsese directed The Aviator which starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes. The 2004 film portrays Hughes’ life when he became an established film producer and an aviation magnate while getting unstable due to his severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
DiCaprio’s starring film grossed $214 million, receiving positive reviews from the critics and won several awards including 5 Oscars under its banner.
The Aviator is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Meanwhile, Nolan’s Oppenheimer is set to be released in the United Kingdom and United States on July 21, 2023, by Universal Pictures.
Source: TotalFilm
