movies

Universal announcing the new Christopher Nolan on the same week that ‘Joker 2’ was bombing in theaters was seen by some as a “twisting the knife” on Warner Bros.

Puck’s Matt Belloni is reporting that Warners co-chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy weren’t even allowed to read the script for Nolan’s next movie. Only Universal’s Donna Langley was given the honor of going through the pages. It turns out, Nolan didn’t even consider Warner Bros.

De Luca was very open about wanting Nolan’s return to his “home” studio after their public fallout over the previous regime’s theatrical strategy for “Tenet” during the pandemic. “We’re hoping to get Nolan back,” De Luca told Variety last summer. “I think there’s a world.”

In a sign of rapprochement, Nolan had even been allowed to do post-production work on "Oppenheimer" on the Warners lot. The get-back-Nolan campaign went as far as De Luca convincing his boss, David Zaslav, to write Nolan a seven-figure “royalty” check to make up for the “Tenet” debacle.

All of these olive branches didn’t seem to help since Nolan has now returned to Universal for his next film, the same studio that drove Oppenheimer to gross nearly $1B worldwide and winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Nolan.