Christopher Nolan has suggested that the box office success of Oppenheimer could lead to a new era of cinema that is less defined by franchises.
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Speaking on the Countdown to the BAFTAs podcast, the director, who was joined by his wife and Oppenheimer producer Emma Thomas, shared his prediction for the future of cinema, claiming that audiences will always have an appetite for original material.
“I think the success of Oppenheimer certainly points to a sort of post franchise, post intellectual property, landscape for movies — it’s kind of encouraging,” Nolan told the podcast, hosted by Alex Zane.
He added that Oppenheimer reminded “the studios that there is an appetite for something people haven’t seen before or an approach to things that people haven’t seen before.”
To date, Oppenheimer has grossed $953million at the global box office. It has also received a leading 13 nominations from both the BAFTA Film Awards and the Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor.
Nolan continued on the podcast: “Everybody has a tendency to talk down the movie business. For the whole time I’ve been working in movies, I felt the cultural establishment was always predicting the demise of movie theatres, and I now get asked that question: ‘what do I think about the health of the movie business?’ And I don’t really know how to respond.
“We just released a three hour R-rated film about quantum physics, and it made a billion dollars. Like what? Obviously, our view is that the audience is excited to see something new.”
The director concluded by saying he hoped Oppenheimer had allowed other filmmakers to see how non-franchise films can still be a major success in the marketplace.
“Just as we were able to point to Avengers End Game as an unlikely running time for such an incredibly successful film, something like Oppenheimer working gives other filmmakers a point of reference for how something can work in the marketplace that the studio can relate to,” he said.
In other news, it was recently announced that Oppenheimer will be released in Japanese cinemas, despite a backlash from the country over the film’s sensitive subject matter.