Christopher Nolan reportedly considered making a James Bond movie after Tenet. However, he ultimately turned down the offer when it was made clear he wouldn’t have the final cut on the film.
According to Variety’s new report into the news that Bond would be transferring over to Amazon MGM Studios, Barbara Broccoli was behind the decision. They wrote: “Broccoli made clear that no director would have final cut while Bond was under her purview”. Instead, Nolan went on to make Oppenheimer, which became a box office hit and won the director a slate of Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Nolan has previously shared how he would “love” to make a Bond movie, and is a huge fan of 007. Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast back in 2023, he said: “The influence of those movies on my filmography is embarrassingly apparent. And so there’s no attempt to shy away from that. I love the films. You know, it would be an amazing privilege to do one.”
However, even at that time, he hinted at the limitations of working on the spy franchise. “At the same time, when you take on a character like that you’re working with a particular set of constraints,” Nolan continued. “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.”
Up next for the director is The Odyssey, an adaptation of the epic poem by Homer. Matt Damon leads the cast as Odysseus and the movie also stars Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, and Elliot Page.
For more upcoming movies, check out our guide to 2025 movie release dates.