Christopher Nolan Was ‘on the Fence’ About Making ‘Dark Knight’ and ‘Didn’t Want to Become a Superhero Director,’ Says Brother Jonathan: I Told Him ‘Don’t Be a Chicken S—! Let’s Do This’
variety.comZack Sharf Digital News Director Jonathan Nolan said during a recent interview on the “Armchair Expert” podcast with Dax Shepard that it took some convincing to get his brother, Christopher Nolan, to agree to direct “The Dark Knight.” The filmmaker had already hit a superhero movie slam dunk with “Batman Begins” and was hesitant to make another comic book movie because he didn’t want his career getting pigeonholed. “I worked on ‘Batman Begins’ in this slightly arm’s length capacity, but it was the one comic book my brother ever given me as a kid, ‘Batman: Year One,’ for my 14th birthday, and 10 years later I was on the set working with him,” Jonathan said, remembering thinking “this is nuts.” “Chris was on the fence about making another one,” Jonathan continued, noting that Chris went straight from “Batman Begins” into helming the magician thriller “The Prestige.” “He didn’t want to become a superhero movie director.” Jonathan said that Chris was “very proud” of “Batman Begins,” but “to me, it was like we built this amazing sports car, and I’m like, ‘Let’s take it for a drive.
Don’t you want to make another one?’” “We spent an hour telling the origin story, and that’s great, but it’s like, ‘what [more] can we do with this?’” Jonathan remembered telling Chris. “Can we take the same characters and shift ever so slightly into a different genre?
Can we go from an adventure film to a crime film, to a mob movie, and bring that feeling into it?” “So I was literally sitting with [producer] Charles Roven and Chris and being like, ‘Dude, don’t be a chicken shit.
Let’s do this!’” Jonathan continued. “And I knew with the script — and he developed the story with David Goyer with a little bit of input from me — it was like first act.
Read more on variety.com
