Christopher Nolan is one of the biggest fan-favorite directors of all time when it comes to amazing directors making outstanding movies. With several superhits up his sleeve including the masterpiece The Dark Knight as well as his recent blockbuster Oppenheimer, the renowned filmmaker has a terrifically long way to go. Yet, even Nolan had a dream project that would’ve starred Jim Carrey as the lead, also marking the first collaboration from the pair.
However, this movie could never make it to the big screens because of another similar movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead. But it brought some good with it too – it ended up with the making of the Cillian Murphy starrer Oppenheimer in the most remarkable way possible.
Christopher Nolan Dreamt Of Casting Jim Carrey In His Howard Hughes Biopic
One of the biggest visionaries of all time, Christopher Nolan firmly believed that the so-called ‘cursed’ biopic of Howard Hughes wasn’t so ostensibly cursed as it seemed, also the reason why he wanted to create it in the first place, keeping Jim Carrey in mind as the lead. Sharing his views all the while letting fans run their imagination wild about his biopic-in-making in an interview, he said,
“Well, it’s not cursed. It’s just never happened. Cursed is when you do it and it fails miserably, and somebody else does it and it fails miserably. No one has ever gone ahead with a Howard Hughes biopic. I don’t know why it has a reputation as being cursed, and I don’t intend to find out. I think casting may have had something to do with it, and I think I’ve found the one guy, in the person of Jim Carrey, who can actually do what’s required by the part. It’s a monumental part to try to pull off, no question. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. I hope.”
Thus, he tried his best to make a script to prove all the critics wrong. And even though he succeeded, he got just a teensy bit late, because Martin Scorsese‘s biopic The Aviator, starring the Titanic lead as Howard Hughes got to the stage before him.
“I was definitely like, ‘F—!’ I think it’s the best script I’ve ever written, and I had a really wonderful experience writing it. Yeah, it was a frustrating experience that the other movie [The Aviator] got going [first]. Will I revisit it? I have no idea. I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out, but I wrote it a long time ago.”
Although the Leonardo DiCaprio starrer got several Oscar nods and even won five of them, fans still believe that Christopher Nolan’s rendition of his own biopic would’ve been a better version.
Christopher Nolan Recently Shared How This Derailing Helped Him Make Oppenheimer
Recently, at the promotion of his most recent movie Oppenheimer, Nolan once again talked about his dream project that never made it to the big screen. He also revealed how, thanks to his Hughes biopic getting derailed, he could produce the Cillian Murphy starrer in a much better way.
“Many years ago, I had written a script about the life of Howard Hughes that never got made because I wrote it right as Scorsese was making his own film. But I cracked the script to my satisfaction, and that gave me a lot of insight into how to distill a person’s life and how to view a person’s life in a thematic way so that the film is more than the sum of its parts.”
Regardless, though his Howard Hughes version couldn’t reach the audiences, Christopher Nolan still managed to pull off the biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer in such a splendid way that fans can’t help but thank Leonardo DiCaprio for derailing his earlier movie.
Oppenheimer is still out in theatres now!
Source: The Daily Beast
