For almost 20 years, it was impossible to separate a Christopher Nolan film from its producers at Warner Bros. The studio had backed almost every Nolan project, from Insomnia in 2002 to Tenet in 2020, but their collaboration fell apart after Warner Bros. launched “Project Popcorn.” Its maligned pandemic-era streaming strategy put movies in theaters and on streaming platforms simultaneously, limiting their box office staying power and annoying the directors who’d made the films.
Since then, Nolan has turned to Universal Pictures, and their first outing, Oppenheimer, proved to be a winning combination. The 2023 film is one of the highest-grossing biopics of all time, and it earned Nolan his first-ever Academy Awards. Clearly, Universal knows it’s got a good thing going with the director, as the studio has already signed on to produce Nolan’s latest film.
