Christopher Nolan ditches WB, his home of 20 years, to make his next movie at Universal

Christopher Nolan, the director of films like The Dark Knight and Inception, has exited his partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures, the studio he’s been with for nearly two decades, according to Deadline. Nolan will make his next movie, reportedly a look at scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, a key figure in the Manhattan Project and the development of the first nuclear bombs, with Universal Pictures.

Nolan’s departure from the studio comes after a tense couple of years over the direction of Warner Bros., and more recently, issues stemming from how the filmmaker felt after his latest film Tenet was released in 2020. While the studio reportedly wanted to release the movie on its HBO Max streaming platform, Nolan was adamant that the movie go exclusively to cinemas, despite the ongoing pandemic. The movie was released exclusively in theaters last September. Tenet saw a modest global box office, but didn’t come close to the heights of Nolan’s previous films.

Nolan was even more outspoken when WB announced that it would bring all of its 2021 movie to the HBO Max streaming service on the same day they arrived in theaters.

“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important move stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest move studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service,” Nolan said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

There’s no word yet on when Nolan’s new movie will be released, but it seems like a safe bet that it will be in theaters long before it makes it to streaming — at least if Nolan has anything to say about it. Although, the move wouldn’t be unheard of for Universal. Just last week the studio announced that its upcoming horror blockbuster Halloween Kills will come to Peacock, Universal’s streaming service, and theaters on the same day.