The annals of unmade Christopher Nolan films are not particularly long. Perhaps one of the legendary projects mentioned in the past was Nolan’s unrealized Howard Hughes project—some brief elements of which he folded into Bruce Wayne’s recluse period in “The Dark Knight Rises.” There was also, at one point in the past, Nolan’s intentions of remaking the surreal 1960s TV series, “The Prisoner,” created by and starring Patrick McGoohan (which is loosely rumored to be among the next projects he is thinking about making post “Oppenheimer”). But that’s really as far and deep as you can get really.
But there is at least one more project and or projects that were never made. Nolan’s younger brother and former co-writer, Jonathan Nolan, is out promoting his upcoming apocalyptic TV series, “Fallout,” an adaptation of the video game. During some recent press interviews, Jonathan revealed, ever so briefly, that one of Nolan’s unmade films from around the era of “Following” and “Memento” is an untitled comedy.
On both Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast and Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Nolan told the stories of his early origins, writing the short story “Memento” that older brother Chris made into a feature, and co-writing on many of his early films including “The Prestige” and most of the “Batman.”
Nolan described a road trip from Chicago to LA they took together where Jonathan pitched Chris “Memento,” and the older filmmaker was intrigued enough to eventually make it. But in the telling of it, he mentions as an aside that Chris has some unmade films from that era.
“I picked him up in Chicago, and we made the rest of the drive, and he was talking about the films he wanted to make—and I’ll leave it to him and his next sit down with you to talk about the films he would have made otherwise. One of them was a comedy, which was exciting.”
Nolan repeated much of the same story on Dax Shepard’s podcast but also mentioned that Chris may still want to make some of them one day so he wouldn’t divulge details.
“He made one movie, and he was talking about his ideas for the next movie—which I can’t describe in case he ever wants to get back to them,” he explained. “They’re very different, and one of them was a comedy.”
Shepard said the surprise that Nolan had been thinking about a comedy was deeply unexpected. Still, Jonathan said Christopher’s public and private personas are very different, and he’s much funnier than anyone thinks.
“Well, that’s the thing about the guy; his public person is so kind of reserved, but he’s such a goofball. It’s odd for me to resolve the public version with the guy [I know],” he said.
Nolan has talked about some of his favorite comedies in the past, and Adam McKay’s “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” is one that often comes up, but the filmmaker hasn’t usually delved too deeply into his comedic tastes, presumably because no one has really asked him about it.
Either way, we all want to see Christopher Nolan write and direct a comedy someday, right? Listen to the podcasts below.