The Christopher Nolan rumors just aren’t stopping. This is getting ridiculous, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Universal is just spreading false stories to keep people guessing until the film is revealed. Last we heard, Variety’s sources were saying Nolan’s latest would be a spy movie. But not so fast …
Gizmodo, a reliably popular tech site, has kind of buried the lede in their Holland/Nolan casing story. They got word, from “reliable sources,” that Nolan’s next film is apparently going to be a vampire movie set in the 1920s.
Now, you must be thinking, isn’t Ryan Coogler already making that same exact movie? Yes, he is. Coogler’s “Sinners” is getting released in March 2025, and Nolan’s film has set up a July 2026 date. That’s a big enough gap in the schedule, and I’m hearing “Sinners” isn’t anything to write home about either.
However, it surely doesn’t help that Robert Eggers is releasing his own Vampire film in December, “Nosferatu,” and that Luc Besson just wrapped production on his “Dracula,” starring Caleb Landry Jones and Christoph Waltz. Oh, and then there’s Chloe Zhao, who is set to shoot a “Vampire Western” sometime next year.
Hopefully, Nolan isn’t treading familiar territory with this one. If Gizmodo’s reporting turns out to be true, then this promises to be unlike any film Nolan has delivered before, in a genre he has yet to tackle. Then again, just a week ago, I was told that the next Nolan wasn’t a horror movie. Does a Vampire movie count as horror? Presumably, it does.
This past February, Nolan spoke about horror films at BFI. He called the genre “visceral,” with “a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction,” and that it allowed filmmakers to do things onscreen that Hollywood was typically “resistant to.” He additionally mentioned that, if “an exceptional idea” came to him, he would definitely make a horror film.
In his career, Nolan has dabbled in sci-fi, noir, biopic, comic book, and war films. Horror would be a fresh new direction. We’ve been seeing more and more A-list filmmakers delving into the genre of late, including most recently, an upcoming Coen brothers film. Alfonso Cuaron had also mentioned that he was developing a horror film.
So, how many rumors is that now? Variety reporting Nolan’s next one is a spy movie. THR hearing it might be a “father-son” story, which they later recanted. Grace Randolph saying it was maybe a “horror film.” A Reddit rumor suggesting that it might be an action movie influenced by 1983’s “Blue Thunder” (still not debunked). It seems like we’re just hopping from genre to genre here.
The studio has unveiled "The Angel Promise," a sweeping new content policy that bans on-screen sex, nudity, F-words and any misuse of God's name in its films.