Have you caught our interview with filmmaker Christopher Nolan yet? The celebrated director is back with his latest coruscating masterpiece, Oppenheimer, a dense and sweeping account of the development of the atomic bomb, as seen through the eyes of its creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy).
Given that Nolan's achievements have ranged from ambitious backward-forward narratives (Memento) to rule-breaking comic book epics (the Dark Knight trilogy) and visually stunning excursions into wormholes (Interstellar), there can surely be little else for him to accomplish.
There is one thing, however: a certain secret agent by the name of Bond. James Bond. The 007 movies have long been an influence on Nolan's own – he designed the ski sequence in Inception as an homage to On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Tenet was essentially an old-school Bond movie with a timey-wimey twist. And he's confessed that he'd love to have a crack at the long-running franchise.
On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Nolan admitted that the influence of Bond on his own cinematic canon is "embarrassingly apparent". However, given the creative control that Nolan enjoys, he says that any potential movie would have to be made exactly to his specifications, and this would extend to the casting of 007 himself.
“You wouldn’t want to take on a film not fully committed to what you bring to the table creatively," Nolan explains. "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."
'They' being franchise gatekeepers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson who typically hold sway over who portrays 007. In 2021, Broccoli and Wilson resolved Daniel Craig's era as Bond with No Time To Die. Is it feasible to imagine Nolan at the helm of a rebooted 007 epic?
Nolan says it would be an "amazing privilege" to direct a film in the James Bond series, adding: "It has to be the right moment in your creative life where you can express what you want to express."
In the meantime, we can relish a typically Nolan-esque experience in the form of Oppenheimer, which blows the roof off with its IMAX-captured vistas. Click the link below to secure your Oppenheimer tickets.
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