Director Christopher Nolan on retiring from filmmaking & if he’ll direct another superhero movie

Christopher Nolan is one of the most lauded directors in Hollywood with Oppenheimer set to drop in theaters this week. The filmmaker is opening up about where he stands on the notion of retiring and if he would ever make another superhero movie.

During a recent interview, Nolan was asked about his future in filmmaking and how he sees himself in the years ahead. On one side, Quentin Tarantino said he would be retiring following his tenth film, while Martin Scorsese has continued making films into his 80s but recently acknowledged he’s getting older.

“The truth is, I understand both points of view. It’s addictive to tell stories in cinema. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s very fun. It’s something you feel driven to do, and so it’s a little hard to imagine voluntarily stopping,” Nolan said during an interview on CinemaBlend’s podcast ReelBlend. “But I also see … Quentin’s point has always been that – and he never, very graciously, he’s never specific about the films he’s talking about or whatever – but he’s looking at some of the work done by filmmakers in later years and feeling that if it can’t live up to the heyday, it would be better if it didn’t exist. And I think that’s a very purest point of view. It’s the point of view of a cinephile who prizes film history.”

Nolan said that he’s not entirely “sure that I would trust my own sense of the absolute value of a piece of work to know whether or not it should have been brought into existence.”

The Interstellar director said he’s a “big fan” of films that don’t always “fully achieve what they try to” and adds, “I think (I) wanted to keep a sort of perfect reputation of something, but also kind of don’t want to take anything off the table.”

In a separate interview with YouTube channel Hugo Décrypte, Nolan said he saw himself making movies in the next ten years and shot down the idea of making a television series.

Nolan is still highly praised for the Batman trilogy that transformed Christian Bale into the Dark Knight. When asked if he would direct another superhero movie he said, “No.”

However, when the YouTube host asked Nolan if he would direct a Star Wars movie, he paused and hesitated before saying “Pass.”

Nolan not wanting to direct another superhero movie puts a pause on fans hoping he would want to add another entry into The Dark Knight saga as Bale said he would only play Bruce Wayne again if the director was behind the project.

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