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Christopher Nolan says he’s not doing a Bond, James Bond, movie as his next project.
The director shot down speculation he might pivot to the 007 franchise after the blockbuster success of his summer period drama Oppenheimer.
“No, sadly no — no truth to those rumors,” Nolan told The Associated Press in an interview while promoting the home video release of Oppenheimer, which is breaking records as the highest-grossing World War II-related film and highest-grossing biopic, having raked in $950 million globally since July.
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Nolan fans went into a frenzy after several entertainment sites reported in October that the director was in talks to direct “two or three” films for the franchise and was on board “in principle” to make movies that recast Bond in the original period setting of Ian Fleming’s novels from the 1950s.
And Nolan himself has long suggested he’d be down.
“The influence of those movies in my filmography is embarrassingly apparent,” Nolan told the Happy Sad Confused podcast in July. “And so there’s no attempt to shy away from that. I love the films. You know, it would be an amazing privilege to do one. It has to be the right moment in your creative life where you can express what you want to express and really burrow into something within the appropriate constraints because you would never want to take on something like that and do it wrong. You wouldn’t want to take on a film not fully committed to what you bring to the table creatively. So as a writer, casting, everything, it’s a full package. You’d have to be really needed, you’d have to be really wanted in terms of bringing the totality of what you bring to a character. Otherwise, I’m very happy to be first in line to see whatever they do.”
Several of Nolan’s hits have had a Bond-ian vibe, particularly Tenet and Inception.
Nolan also revealed in a 2017 interview with Playboy that he has kept in contact with Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson and would “definitely” be down to take on a film in the hit franchise. “I deeply love the character, and I’m always excited to see what they do with it,” he said. “Maybe one day that would work out.”
Nolan has been characteristically quiet about his next project coming off Oppenheimer, while Bond producers have likewise been quiet while they search for a new star to replace Daniel Craig, who completed his run as Bond in 2021’s No Time to Die.
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