Filmmaker Christopher Nolan put his Peloton instructor on blast recently, relating a story about instructor Jenn Sherman putting one of his movies during a workout. Unbeknownst to the instructor, Nolan was one of her students in a class during which she made a number of jokes about Tenet, his 2020 sci-fi thriller, late in that year. Tenet had not shared the story until recently, when he related it as a funny anecdote about the challenges of taking criticism. He had, in part, joked that professional film critics don’t expect you to work out while they critique your work.
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Fans online heard Nolan’s comments, and found video of the December 2020 course, in which Sherman called the movie “two and a half hours of my life I’ll never get back.” After Nolan’s response went viral, Sherman apologized for the incident, inviting Nolan to come, work out, and critique her work at the Peloton Studio.
“Nothing but love for Peloton,” Nolan told Variety at the Golden Globes, where he won Best Director for Oppenheimer. “But I did not climb on it today. I might just skip it for a little while.”
Tenet was controversial not for its confusing, disorienting plot, but for Nolan’s insistence on getting it into theaters as soon as possible during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, exhibitors were hoping Nolan’s return to the multiplex would bring in big audiences, providing some financial relief following the early 2020 shutdown of the theater industry. People outside of the industry critiqued both exhibitors and Nolan himself for being so keen to big bring groups of people together at a time when there wasn’t yet a COVID vaccine.
In 2021, Warner Bros. decided to release all of its films day-and-date on HBO Max — a decision that pleased audiences but left both exhibitors and a number of filmmakers, including Nolan, livid. He abandoned his long working relationship with the studio, bringing Oppenheimer to Universal, where it became one of the biggest movies of 2020 (although, admittedly, it was beat out at the box office by Warner’s own Barbie).
Oppenheimer stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer. Oscar® winner Matt Damon portrays General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. The film is produced by Emma Thomas, Atlas Entertainment’s Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan.
You can buy Oppenheimer on disc and digital now. It is not yet streaming for free, but when it does, it will likely be on Peacock. It also has the endorsement of Jenn Sherman.
