Christopher Nolan is one of the biggest directors in Hollywood. With his latest film Oppenheimer earning $778 million at the global box office, it became one of the highest-grossing R-rated films of all time. The biopic on the father of the atomic bomb starred Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer.
When Christopher Nolan announced that he would be making a biopic next, it was uncharted territory and added more hype to the anticipation. However, this was not the first time Nolan got his hands on a biopic. Way before he became known for his Batman films, Nolan was working on a biopic on Howard Hughes with Jim Carrey.
Christopher Nolan’s Howard Hughes Biopic
After the success of his films Following, Memento, and Insomnia, Christopher Nolan had the opportunity to do anything he would like. He started working on a biopic on Howard Hughes even before the release of Insomnia. No biopic on the reclusive billionaire had been made yet, although the final years of his life were subject to a lot of interest.
Talking about what gravitated him towards the life of Hughes, Christopher Nolan said,
“Most people know a little bit about [Howard Hughes’] life but not that much which makes him an ideal subject for a film. He embodies so much of the American concern with material wealth and the effect that it may have on you…He was on top of the world and the first real American billionaire and then he spent decades shut away in small hotels.”
Nolan revealed in interviews at the time that The Truman Show actor Jim Carrey would be starring as Hughes in the film and was excited to be a part of it. Carrey had already ventured into the biopic realm with his amazing performance as comedian Andy Kaufman in the film Man on the Moon. Nolan mentioned that Jim Carrey had a lot of interesting ideas that were in line with his own and was a great collaborator on the script.
Will Christopher Nolan Revisit The Biopic?
Christopher Nolan abandoned his plans for the Howard Hughes biopic after the release of the Leonardo DiCaprio starrer The Aviator. While many other filmmakers had been eyeing the story of Howard Hughes, Nolan was the closest to having been in development. However, Martin Scorsese beat him in the race, which ended up earning over $213 million at the global box office.
Previous interviews with Christopher Nolan show how excited he was to work on the project, and also working with Jim Carrey. Talking about Carrey’s involvement, he said,
“We have met several times to discuss the specifics of the direction we were going in and Jim has some fantastic ideas which are close to my ideas. We are having quite a bit of fun. He is just perfect. He was born to play him.”
While Christopher Nolan went on to make The Dark Knight trilogy, The Prestige, and Inception after Insomnia, he is often asked about the biopic’s status. However, Nolan seems to have moved on from the project. In an interview with Daily Beast during the promotion of Interstellar, he said,
“I was definitely like, ‘F*ck!’ 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 got going. Will I revisit it? I have no idea…I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out, but I wrote it a long time ago.”
The world did get to see how Nolan would envision a real-life event with two World War II-based films, Dunkirk and Oppenheimer. However, his Howard Hughes biopic would still be one of the most anticipated projects that were never made.
Source: Daily Beast
