How Christopher Nolan Became The Biggest Director In Hollywood
Few directors of the modern era have captured the imagination of the movie-going public in quite the same way as Christopher Nolan. From humble beginnings making low-budget crime movies, through a genre-defining superhero trilogy, to an all-conquering biopic of a controversial scientist, Nolan has always done things his way and brought the masses along for the ride. This article explores his career in detail and tries to answer the question of just how this well-dressed, softly spoken Englishman became the biggest director in Hollywood.
Oppenheimer sweeps the Oscars
On March 10, 2024, Nolan reached the top of the mountain in his industry. His thrilling biopic Oppenheimer — telling the thought-provoking story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, creator of the atomic bomb — took home Best Picture at the Academy Awards, and Nolan also scooped the Best Director Oscar for the first time.
The picture had been nominated for no fewer than 13 awards at the ceremony — the most of any film — and it won seven, with Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. scoring Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.
A meaningful part of movie history
In his engaging acceptance speech, Nolan paid tribute not only to his cast, crew, and studio, but also to the movies as an art form. He said, “To the Academy — movies are just a little bit over 100 years old.”
He continued, “We don’t know where this incredible journey is going from here. But to know that you think I’m a meaningful part of it means the world to me.” With great emotion, he then added, “Thank you to those who have believed in me my whole career.”
“Sometimes you catch a wave”
It was fitting reward for a movie which had been critically adored, but also hugely outstripped expectations at the box office. It made $957 million worldwide — a figure unheard of for talky, three-hour biopics about real-life events — and became a genuine cultural phenomenon.
In trying to explain why it resonated so deeply, Nolan told Variety, “With certain films, your timing is just right in ways that you never could have predicted… Sometimes you catch a wave and the story you’re telling is one people are waiting for.”
An astonishing payday
Indeed, Oppenheimer was such an enormous hit that it didn’t just see Nolan cement his status as the most powerful director in the game; it also saw him take home a payday which beggared belief.
In the aftermath of its triumph at the Academy Awards, Variety reported that Nolan personally made almost $100 million, thanks to a number of factors. There was his base salary, obviously, but also his deal included a cut of the movie’s profits, as well as bonuses for box-office escalators and for the Oscar wins.
What makes Nolan so successful?
How did Nolan find himself at the very top of Hollywood, though? How did he go from making a no-budget black-and-white noir film with his university friends to being one of the only directors in the business capable of commanding budgets in the hundreds of millions to make original movies?
And what is it about his films that have helped him cultivate such a dedicated fanbase which will follow him no matter what he does — from crime films to superhero blockbusters, and from war dramas to sci-fi spectaculars?
It all began with Ridley Scott
Nolan began his journey to Hollywood as most other filmmakers do: as a young movie buff. Growing up in Highgate, London, his formative movie experiences were focused around two films by the legendary English director Ridley Scott.
In 2024 he told Sight and Sound magazine, “I had a very specific moment where I had watched Blade Runner at home on VHS — not in the cinema, because I was then too young. I became obsessed with it, the beauty of the density and layering of the imagery.”
Realizing what a director does
“Then, when I was old enough, I watched Alien,” revealed Nolan, “and as when you hear two pieces by the same musician, or read two books by the same writer, I distinctly remember realising it was the same mind behind these two different movies.”
He revealed, “I had been making my own films — just shooting things and cutting them together — but suddenly, at the age of 13 or 14, I understood directing… Realizing that there was a mind controlling that aesthetic, that feeling at the end of the film.”
Completely immersive
Regarding this sudden epiphany, Nolan clarified, “It wasn’t any one thing. It was photography; it was sound; it was costumes. It was control over the whole mise-en-scène. My realisation was very particular to Ridley Scott, and my love for his films and obsession with the way he was doing things.”
To this day, Scott is still one of Nolan’s favorite directors, and he marvels at the old master’s ability to visualize and create “extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive.”
Star Wars changed everything
Of course, as a film-loving boy growing up in the ‘70s, Nolan’s cinematic life was also defined by a galaxy far, far away. He was just seven years old when in 1977 Star Wars came out, and he once told MTV News, “That completely changed movies for me. It changed everything, really.”
He explained, “It created a world that lived on in your mind after you saw the film and seemed to have this limitless potential.” He added, “That's a really extraordinary experience to have as a moviegoer.”
He didn’t go to film school
Even though Nolan’s adolescence was spent making his own home movies with a Super 8 camera, when it came time for college, he didn’t go to film school. Instead, he attended University College London to study English Literature.
The celebrated director feels reading the works of authors like Jorge Luis Borges helped him develop a style of non-linear storytelling he would later apply to film. In fact, he called it, “an instinctive, organic understanding… that you don’t have to just tell a story from beginning to end.”
A theory about non-linear storytelling
Fascinatingly, Nolan has a theory that VHS technology — which first gave film fans the ability to pause and resume movies at their discretion — led to filmmakers being able to take more chances with their narratives. He argued, “You can control it in a way; it doesn’t just pass across you the way it does on television.”
He continued, “That’s a big reason why, when I started in films with Following and Memento, it was still seen as radical or unusual not to tell the story chronologically, which has never been the case in literature.”
Finding his personal and professional partner
It was while attending UCL that Nolan met the woman who would go on to be his personal and professional partner for life. Emma Thomas ran the university’s film society with him, and they eventually married and had four children together.
She is also integral to his rise as a filmmaker, though, having worked as a producer on all of his films. When asked how their relationship works, Nolan mused, “I’ve never really analysed it; we’ve just always worked together since the early days.”
He and his wife have complementary skill sets
“We have different skill sets, I suppose,” reasoned Nolan. “She’s interested in facilitating and trying to be practical about combinations of people and places. It’s not that I’m the crazy dreamer and she pours cold water on things; I have a very practical sensibility too.”
He explained, “But she’s a people person, she’s got an incredible understanding of film craft and technique, and she’s the best producer around by far.” He added, “For me, it’s the joy of working with somebody who has a wealth of hands-on knowledge, but no agenda.”
The British film industry was no help to Nolan
At university, Nolan made several short films, and then attempted to get a feature film financed in the mid-‘90s. Unfortunately, he had no luck in the world of British film. And in 2005 he criticized this experience of his native land’s movie infrastructure.
He told The Guardian, “There's a very limited pool of finance in the U.K. To be honest, it's a very clubby kind of place.” He added, “I never had any luck with interesting people in small projects… Never had any support whatsoever from the British film industry.”
So he financed Following himself
Frustrated by his lack of progress in the traditional British film business, Nolan took it upon himself to make his own opportunity. After graduating from UCL, he shot Following, a black-and-white noir with a soon-to-be-trademark fractured timeline.
The budget was miniscule — around £3,000 — and it was filmed on weekends with a cast of friends, most of whom weren’t even professional actors. Nolan has admitted that every choice he made in shaping the film was dictated by necessity, not artistic intent.
A piecemeal production schedule
In 2002 he told The A.V. Club, “Everyone involved in the film was, you know, working full-time and trying to get by in London, which is difficult and expensive. But we figured out that if you shot in 16mm black-and-white, which made the lighting much easier to set up, we could shoot 15 minutes of footage every week.”
Nolan could then “pay for that, and keep going one day a week as we earned money through our various jobs. So, it took us three or four months, shooting one day a week, to finish the production.”
The story’s unique structure was instinctive for Nolan
The film told the story of an unemployed writer who begins following strangers in London, ostensibly as research for a novel. Yet when he follows a well-dressed man named Cobb who turns out to be a thief, he is drawn into his criminal orbit.
The narrative is told with three timeframes — beginning, middle, and end — shown simultaneously, and Nolan admitted, “I really just constructed the film on an instinctive basis. I didn’t quite know what I was doing, in a way.”
A tale that expands in all directions
“I just knew that I had a structure that made a lot of sense to me,” continued Nolan. “What I tried to do was tell a story in something like a three-dimensional sense — to tell a story that expands in all directions as you're passing through the narrative… I realized that that’s the way we receive most stories in real life.”
For example, he noted, “News is a process of expansion, the filling in of detail, and making narrative connections — not based on chronology, but based on features of the story.”
Perfecting this approach with Memento
If Following was Nolan learning by doing, then by the time he made his second film Memento, he had perfected his particular brand of puzzle-box storytelling. For this tale of a man with anterograde amnesia investigating his wife’s murder, Nolan told the story in two alternating timeframes.
The first timeframe consisted of black-and-white scenes shown in order, while the second was color scenes which started at the end of the story and worked backwards. By the time the film reached its conclusion, the two narratives had joined together.
Nolan breaks out as a Hollywood talent to watch
Memento announced Nolan as a major new talent in Hollywood, wowing critics and quickly developing a cult following. It also earned Nolan his first Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay — one that Newmarket Films’ Aaron Ryder dubbed, “Perhaps the most innovative script I had ever seen.”
Nolan later told Sight and Sound, “I don’t think anyone goes to see low-budget independent films to see a cheap version of a studio film. They go to see something that’s fundamentally different… And that’s absolutely what we tried to offer with Memento.”
Levelling up with Insomnia
Next, Nolan upped the ante with his first major studio film: Warner Bros’ Insomnia, a remake of a Norwegian thriller. This time he had major stars — Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, Robin Williams — and a substantial $46 million budget at his disposal.
The movie was a hit, and it proved that Nolan could deliver acclaimed, profitable films within the studio system. This is why, only five years after he’d burst onto the scene with Memento, Nolan found himself at the helm of a reboot of one of WB’s most iconic franchises.
Batman was floundering
You see, in 1997 the studio had released Batman & Robin, their fourth film based on the beloved D.C. Comics hero — and it was unanimously rejected by fans and critics alike. The negative reaction, coupled with an under-par performance at the box office, convinced the studio to hit pause on any future Bat-pictures for the time being.
Yet when Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man became a megahit in 2002 WB knew it was time to begin exploring a new beginning for Batman. And that’s where the innovative, passionate Nolan came in.
An opportunity arose to reinvigorate the franchise
When Nolan heard that WB wanted to track another crack at Batman, he thought it sounded like a unique opportunity. In 2005 he told The Guardian, “The great part was that they wanted to refresh and invigorate the franchise but didn't have any specific concepts and were essentially looking for someone to come in and tell them what to do.”
He explained, “It's pretty unusual to have this sort of movie up for grabs.” In essence, Nolan felt he could pitch his Batman — not a version the studio was dictating — and it could stand a chance of being given the green light.
A different studio attitude
These days, production of new superhero movies resembles a well-oiled machine, and some feel their creative identities can be steamrollered by working toward a strict studio mandate. In the early 2000s, though, the environment was very different.
Nolan told Sight and Sound, “Back then, doing a large-scale studio project with a property like Batman was a way to express your personality as a filmmaker: it was an outlet for that creativity. I saw it as an opportunity to dive into the world of action filmmaking that I loved growing up and put my stamp on it.”
Batman Begins hits — and becomes very influential
Nolan’s approach to Batman was simple, yet revolutionary at the same time. He grounded the character in reality much more than the previous Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher iterations, while still leaving room for fanciful elements.
Audiences and critics responded to Nolan’s uniquely intelligent and exciting blockbuster tone, and the movie was a mid-sized hit at the box office. Crucially, though, its influence would soon be obvious when other franchises such as James Bond received their own gritty, thoughtful reboots.
The Dark Knight becomes a cultural phenomenon
Yet while Batman Begins was popular, its success wound up paling in comparison to that of its sequel. In 2008 Nolan unleashed The Dark Knight on an unsuspecting populace — and it took over the world. At the time, it became the fourth-highest-grossing movie ever, and the reviews were even better than the first time around.
In fact, the movie was so acclaimed that when it didn’t receive a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, the outcry was loud and angry enough that the Academy increased the allocation going forward from five nominees to ten!
It changed the movie business
According to The Hollywood Reporter, “The film made Christopher Nolan a household name, redefined blockbuster movies, necessitated recognition of the artistry of big-budget filmmakers, and transformed how the public viewed the mythos of Batman and the Joker. Simply put, The Dark Knight changed things. Forever.”
In the wake of the film’s overwhelming achievements, Nolan’s clout in Hollywood was the strongest it had ever been — and he used it to get funding for a passion project he’d kicked around in his head for decades.
Inception had been a dream project since his teens
“I wanted to do this for a very long time: it’s something I’ve thought about off and on since I was about 16,” Nolan told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. “I wrote the first draft of this script seven or eight years ago, but it goes back much further, this idea of approaching dream and the dream life as another state of reality.”
He was, of course, talking about the spectacular dreamscape heist thriller Inception — his first mega-budgeted gamble on an original concept. In truth, it was a concept even he wasn’t sure could be rendered comprehensible for audiences.
His most improbable success
The movie — a sci-fi actioner in which Leonardo DiCaprio’s dream thief Dom Cobb steals corporate secrets from the subconscious of rich targets — was by no means a safe bet. Nolan told Sight and Sound, “Of any of the films we’ve done, until Oppenheimer, Inception was the most improbable success.”
He added, “It certainly felt that way at times in the edit suite. I remember being a few weeks in, and Lee Smith, my editor, and myself, felt like we’d made an enormously expensive art film that would never work for an audience.”
The scale had to be almost infinite
Indeed, Inception’s huge $160 million budget gave everyone at WB sleepless nights. But, over the years, Nolan had tried to write more manageable versions, and they simply didn’t work. He told The New York Times, “What I found is, it’s not possible to execute this concept in a small fashion.”
He elaborated, “The reason is, as soon as you’re talking about dreams, the potential of the human mind is infinite. And so, the scale of the film has to feel infinite. It has to feel like you could go absolutely anywhere by the end of the film.”
“The most astounding piece of film creation and direction”
Once again, though, Nolan bet on himself, and it paid off in a huge way. Inception made $837 million at the worldwide box office and became one of the most culturally resonant films of the 2010s in the process.
It won four Academy Awards and was nominated for four more, although Nolan didn’t get the nod for Best Director — a decision with which legendary Titanic director James Cameron vehemently disagreed. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “I think that it’s the most astounding piece of film creation and direction of the year, hands down.”
Hit after hit after hit
After Inception, every door in Hollywood was open for Nolan to stride through. Over the next decade, he made The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Tenet — raking in $1.085 billion, $731 million, $530 million, and $365 million, respectively.
If the takings for Tenet seem low, keep in mind it was released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fittingly, it still managed to be the second-highest-grossing American film of the year, behind only Bad Boys For Life — which hadn’t had to contend with the pandemic.
“Don’t try to understand it”
Admittedly, while its box-office performance was admirable given the circumstances, Tenet was a rarity for Nolan — a movie which divided critics and fans. Many felt the plot was confusing at best, and incomprehensible at worst.
In 2024 though, Nolan told Stephen Colbert, “It’s not a puzzle to be unpacked. It’s an experience to be had, preferably in a movie theater, but also at home.” He added that audiences weren’t “meant to understand everything” — which is why the line, “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it” is in the film.
“Nolanesque”
Naturally, given his enormous success and the fact his films have such a distinctive style and similar thematic concerns, the adjective “Nolanesque” has become shorthand to describe other projects in the same vein. While he understands why the term has become part of the lexicon, some of its implications do make Nolan uncomfortable.
He told Sight and Sound, “When you talk about becoming an adjective, as it were, that’s not the specific fear, because having stylistic connections is not my concern.” Instead, his discomfort lies elsewhere.
He wants the work to speak for itself
“I love filmmakers… who have a very strong sense of style and authorship,” confirmed Nolan. But he added, “To me it’s about not having who I am as a person distract. That’s why I don’t really love doing interviews, I don’t really love being out in front. I want the work to speak for itself.”
He added, “I don’t want to be self-conscious about what I do, so if I’ve found something in The Dark Knight that works for an audience, if it’s also the right tool for Tenet, then I’m not going to avoid using it.”
An ability to mix high art and popular culture
So, now that we’ve traced Nolan’s journey to the top, it’s time to ask the million-dollar question: why has Nolan been so incredibly successful? What is it about his work that inspires such feverish devotion from both film buffs and casual cinemagoers?
Well, esteemed British film critic Mark Kermode has a theory, and it’s all about how Nolan’s films appeal to these different audiences at the same time. He told The Guardian, “Nolan’s uncanny ability to meld high art and popular culture has always been one of his greatest strengths.”
Does he make blockbuster arthouse films?
Kermode argued, “Somewhere between the crowd-pleasing spectacle of Hollywood and the esoteric invention of European cinema lies the work of Christopher Nolan.” He added, “I remember emerging from an early screening of the comic-strip superhero yarn Batman Begins and exclaiming, ‘Wow! That’s the most expensive arthouse film I’ve ever seen!’”
Regarding Oppenheimer, Kermode also noted, “The fact that this darkly ruminative three-hour epic has become the highest-grossing biopic of all time, outselling the poptastically entertaining Bohemian Rhapsody, says much about Nolan’s ability to connect with mainstream audiences.”
Convincing audiences to care about how films are shot
Kermode also marveled at how Nolan has engaged popular audiences in paying attention to the technical aspects of film exhibition. These discussions of aspect ratios and of celluloid film versus digital are now big talking-points surrounding his movies “turning what might have been an esoteric discussion into a central selling point.”
To illustrate this, he noted how few cinemagoers knew about The Dark Knight’s action scenes being shot in the super-large IMAX format. But by the time Nolan made Dunkirk, tickets were purchased “on the basis of screen size and projection processes.”
A collective “waking dream”
Overall, Kermode believes Nolan’s reverence for cinema, and the magic involved in making movies, translates to audiences. He used The Prestige — Nolan’s moody mystery of warring magicians — to illustrate how “we can almost feel Nolan lovingly unpicking the spellbinding history of cinema itself, inviting us to join him in a danse macabre of smoke and mirrors.”
He concluded, “We know it’s a trick, but it’s one in which we choose to invest — for the fleeting chance to experience transcendence in the company of others who, for a brief moment, share our waking dream.”