Right on Cue, Christopher Nolan Gets Pressed on His James Bond Dream

For the last decade and beyond, you’ve been able to set your watch to Christopher Nolan being pressured, questioned, and interrogated on his lifelong love of James Bond anytime he’s got a brand new movie to promote, so why should Oppenheimer be any different?

It’s become a fact of life that the acclaimed filmmaker will always find the conversation circling back around to 007, and he’s never exactly been shy in admitting he’d love the opportunity. The downside, if there is such a thing when you’re talking about someone of Nolan’s caliber helming one of cinema’s greatest IPs, is that he’d need the autonomy and freedom to do whatever he wanted with the secret agent.

During his appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Dark Knight trilogy architect once more wore his fanboy badge right on his sleeve, but outlined a couple of specifics that would be potential deal-breakers.

“The influence of those movies in my filmography is embarrassingly apparent. It would be an amazing privilege to do one. At the same time, when you take on a character like that you’re working with a particular set of constraints. 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 without being 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 and 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.”

With Bond in the midst of preparing for a clean slate, what better way to introduce the next iteration of MI6’s finest than by offering Nolan a completely blank slate to tell the story he wants to tell on his own terms with an actor he’d choose for the title role? It might sound like wishful thinking, but it’s definitely something for new owners Amazon to consider.

For the last decade and beyond, you’ve been able to set your watch to Christopher Nolan being pressured, questioned, and interrogated on his lifelong love of James Bond anytime he’s got a brand new movie to promote, so why should Oppenheimer be any different?

It’s become a fact of life that the acclaimed filmmaker will always find the conversation circling back around to 007, and he’s never exactly been shy in admitting he’d love the opportunity. The downside, if there is such a thing when you’re talking about someone of Nolan’s caliber helming one of cinema’s greatest IPs, is that he’d need the autonomy and freedom to do whatever he wanted with the secret agent.

During his appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Dark Knight trilogy architect once more wore his fanboy badge right on his sleeve, but outlined a couple of specifics that would be potential deal-breakers.

“The influence of those movies in my filmography is embarrassingly apparent. It would be an amazing privilege to do one. At the same time, when you take on a character like that you’re working with a particular set of constraints. 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 without being 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 and 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.”

With Bond in the midst of preparing for a clean slate, what better way to introduce the next iteration of MI6’s finest than by offering Nolan a completely blank slate to tell the story he wants to tell on his own terms with an actor he’d choose for the title role? It might sound like wishful thinking, but it’s definitely something for new owners Amazon to consider.