Christopher Nolan Reveals If He Will Direct Another Superhero Movie

Christopher Nolan’s next film, Oppenheimer, opens in theaters in just a few days with the massive film set to bring to the big screen the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist instrumental in the development of the world’s first atomic bomb. But while all the focus is on Oppenheimer, with superhero movies still being wildly popular, many want to know if the director would be interested on returning to the genre nearly two decades after kicking off his Dark Knight Trilogy with Batman Begins and it turns out, the director is putting that genre behind him.

Speaking with Hugo Decrypte on YouTube, Nolan had a very simple answer to the question “After Batman, do you want to direct another superhero movie?”: “No.” Interestingly, however, when he was asked if he was interested in directing a Star Wars movie, Nolan didn’t give quite so direct an answer. The filmmaker answered instead with a fairly neutral “Pass”. Nolan notably directed three films within the superhero genre, 2005’s Batman Begins, 2008’s The Dark Knight, and 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises.

Christopher Bale Has Said He’d Only Return as Batman if Nolan Directed

Nolan making it clear that he’s done with the superhero genre largely closes the door for the star of the filmmaker’s Dark Knight Trilogy to return as well. Last year, Christian Bale told ComicBook.com that Nolan would be the only filmmaker that he’d be willing to return as the hero for.

“For me, that would be a matter of Chris Nolan, if he ever decided to do it again and if he chose to come my way again, then yeah, I would consider it because that was always our pact between each other is we would just stick to it. We said we would only ever make three. And then I said to myself, and I’d only ever make it with Chris,” Bale said.

Nolan Had to Trick Batman Begins Producers Into Casting Cillian Murphy

Cillian Murphy stars in Nolan’s Oppenheimer and also appeared in all three of the filmmaker’s Batman films — as well as his films Inception and Dunkirk — and Nolan recently revealed that while Murphy had auditioned for Batman but didn’t get that role, he really wanted him in the film as another character and made sure executives were convinced of the decision by having them on set to see the excitement surrounding Murphy’s screen test.

“When we had our first conversation, I think both of us knew that you weren’t going to wind up playing Batman. But I really wanted to get on set with you, I wanted to get you on film. We did those screen tests very elaborately, on 35mm, with a little set. There was just an electric atmosphere in the crew when you started to perform,” Nolan said.

He continued, “We did two scenes — there was a Bruce Wayne scene and a Batman scene — and I made sure that executives came down and watched what you were doing on set. Everybody was so excited by watching you perform that when I then said to them, ‘Okay, Christian Bale is Batman, but what about Cillian to play Scarecrow?’ there was no dissent.”

Joining Oppenheimer lead Cillian Murphy are Emily Blunt as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as Leslie Groves, Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, Dylan Arnold as Frank Oppenheimer, David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, Matthew Modine as Vannevar Bush, Josh Peck as Kenneth Bainbridge, Devon Bostick as Seth Neddermeyer, Matthias Schweighöfer as Werner Heisenberg, Christopher Denham as Klaus Fuchs, Guy Burnet as George Eltenton, Danny Deferrari as Enrico Fermi, Emma Dumont as Jackie Oppenheimer, Gustaf Skarsgård as Hans Bethe, Trond Fausa Aurvåg as George Kistiakowsky, and Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman.

Opening on July 21st, Oppenheimer is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.