Nobody is shocked by this. We all saw it coming. After the news that WarnerMedia decided to shift the entire 2021 Warner Bros. film slate to HBO Max, it was almost a given that cinematic purist Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros’ most cherished and important filmmaker, would be walking away from the studio.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Nolan is caput with Warner Bros. It’s unclear how that might affect projects he currently has in development, but he wants none of it, no HBO Max for him. This is a major loss for Warner Bros, who cultivated an incredible relationship with Nolan over the past two decades. Ever since Nolan’s 2002 remake of “Insomnia” have Nolan and WB been in partnership, releasing films such as the ‘Dark Knight’ Trilogy, “Interstellar,” “Dunkirk,” and “Inception.”
In 2020, Nolan tightened the hand of WB and, basically, forced them to release “Tenet” in theaters during the pandemic. That is how much faith WB has in Nolan and it cost them dearly as “Tenet” barely passed the $50 million mark at the domestic box-office, but it did, however, manage to amass a cumulative total of $333 million worldwide.