Oppenheimer is doing magnificent business as it recently became the highest-grossing World War II movie of all time after it surpassed the last movie to achieve that feat, which was incidentally Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. Up until Oppenheimer, Nolan has had an immensely successful working relationship with Warner Bros. After The Dark Knight broke record after record at the box office and became one of the most popular superhero movies ever, Nolan was then considered one of the studio’s most bankable directors. He would be given carte blanche in a way that movie legend Clint Eastwood would similarly enjoy.
According to Variety, it almost never happened since a studio executive at Warners had disliked Nolan’s breakout film, Memento, and it was director Steven Soderbergh who convinced them to meet with Nolan when they were searching for someone to helm the thriller, Insomnia. Soderbergh begins to explain, “What happened was, I got a call from Chris’ agent, Dan Aloni, who I had known because he screened Memento for me after it couldn’t find a distributor after being on the festival circuit for a year. Dan calls me up out of the blue and says, ‘Could you watch this movie? I have this client of mine who has this movie, and we think it’s really good, but nobody will pick it up and we don’t understand why. Maybe we’re all crazy.’ I see the movie and I think it’s a fucking instant classic.”
Soderbergh continued, “Cut to months later, Dan calls me and he goes, ‘Look, there’s this script over at Warner, Insomnia. Chris is really interested in it, but Warner won’t take the meeting.’ And I go, ‘What do you mean they won’t take the meeting?’ And he goes, ‘Well, the executive there didn’t like Memento.‘ And I said, ‘Well, so what? Why won’t they take the meeting?’” Soderbergh was now a staunch fan of Memento and would act on Nolan’s behalf to contact the executive himself.
“I called that executive and I said, ‘Take the meeting. You’ve got to take the meeting.’ And he goes, ‘But I didn’t like the movie.’ And I go, ‘Well, did you like the movie-making?’ And he goes, ‘Well, yeah, it’s brilliantly made.’ And I go, ‘Take the meeting.’ That is all I did. I knew Chris well enough to know that if he gets in the room, he’s going to get that job.” And the rest is history.