For Chris Nolan, Oppenheimer’s success opens up a “post-franchise world”
The filmmaker adds that this victory is “encouraging” for the future of the industry.
Winner of five Golden Globes and nominated in no less than thirteen Oscar categories, Oppenheimer made his academic success proportional to his public success. The last film of Christopher Nolan has collected nearly a billion dollars at the global box office, making it one of the highest-grossing films of 2023.
Released during the summer at the same time as barbie of Greta Gerwig, the duo of blockbusters with the particularity that they were not franchises or sequels. Interviewed by the podcast Countdown to the BAFTAsceremony at which the film is also nominated in thirteen categories, Christopher Nolan evokes the importance of this success which could open a new path for original films not from sagas.
“We just released a three-hour film, prohibited for minors unaccompanied by an adult, on quantum physics and it grossed a billion dollars. (…) Obviously our point of view is that the public is there and they are impatient to see something newdeclares the filmmaker. I think the success ofOppenheimer certainly indicates a sort of post-franchise, post-intellectual property landscape for films – that’s quite encouraging. It reminds studios that there’s an appetite for something people haven’t seen before or an approach to things people haven’t seen before.”
The film business is doing very well, according to Christopher Nolan
The example ofOppenheimer reminds us that a multitude of factors, controllable or not, are at work in the success or failure of a film. To start, Nolan did Oppenheimer thanks to his name and the successes that have marked his career since his beginnings and in particular his trilogy The Dark Knight. Next, the faces in the film are all established and respected stars, from Cillian Murphy has Robert Downey Jr. Passing by Florence Pugh And Emily Blunt.
Finally, the unforeseen phenomenon of “Barbenheimer”the double program of barbie And Oppenheimer, literally ignited social networks and gave birth to one of the most exemplary marketing campaigns in the history of cinema. A real textbook case. So even if indeed, Oppenheimer demonstrates that the public is fond of new things, let’s not forget that it was produced by the same person who helped make a DC franchise one of the bulimic juggernauts they have become today ( with blockbusters from Marvel and/or Sony).
Christopher Nolan doesn’t plan to make small films, but he loves watching them
