Oppenheimer: Christopher Nolan Reportedly Got HUGE Pay Day for Oscar Favorite

Christopher Nolan reportedly earned a lot of money for Oppenheimer, and the number will keep growing.

By Jamie Jirak

The Academy Awards are taking place this weekend, and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is one of the frontrunners. The film scored 13 Oscar nominations, including ones for Best Picture and Best Director. In addition to being a critical success, Oppenheimer also dominated at the box office last year. The film became the third-highest-grossing movie of 2023 and the second-highest-grossing Rated R movie of all time. The movie scored $952.04 million at the box office, and Nolan saw a pretty big chunk of the profits.

According to a new report from Forbes, it's estimated that Nolan earned 15% of Oppenheimer's "first-dollar gross," which means the director gets paid a share of every cent the film earns before Universal Pictures recovers its expenses. The movie's box office takeaway, home video sales, and the first streaming release window were calculated to figure out Nolan's payday. The amount is an estimated $72 million pre-tax after the director pays fees to his agent and lawyer. Nolan's earnings will continue to grow as Oppenheimer gets re-sold to streamers and is licensed in the future. 

"He's the biggest movie star in the world right now," an unnamed talent manager who represents big names in Hollywood told Forbes. 

Christopher Nolan Says Oppenheimer's Success Signifies a "Post-Franchise" Movie Landscape:

During a recent appearance on the Countdown to the BAFTAs podcast, Nolan talked about how the success of Oppenheimer could point to a "post-franchise" shift in Hollywood. 

"Everybody has a tendency to talk down the movie business," Nolan explained. "Really for the whole time I think I've been working in movies, I felt the sort of cultural establishment always predicting the demise of movie theaters. Now I get asked that question, you know, 'What do I think about the health of the movie business?' I don't really know how to respond. We just released a three-hour, R-rated film about quantum physics and it made a billion dollars. Like what? Obviously, our view is that the audience is there and they're excited to see something new."

"The success of Oppenheimer certainly points to a sort of, post-IP landscape for movies ... It's kind of encouraging," he continued. "It reminds the studios that there is an appetite for something people haven't seen before or an approach to things that people haven't seen before." 

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"Something like Oppenheimer working gives other filmmakers a point of reference for how something can work in the marketplace that the studio can relate to," he added.  

Are you rooting for Oppenheimer at the Oscars? Tell us in the comments! 

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