Christopher Nolan is one of the most acclaimed and respected filmmakers in the entertainment industry, but his best movie hasn’t been made yet – here’s what it is about and why it hasn’t happened. Christopher Nolan’s career as a filmmaker began in 1998 with the thriller Following, but the movie that gave him worldwide recognition was the psychological thriller Memento (2000), which introduced the audience to his narrative style and the themes he likes to explore, such as memory, identity, and the concept of time.
Since then, Nolan has explored different genres but all with his signature style of narrative and visual storytelling, and in 2005 he joined a completely different universe with Batman Begins, the first entry in what would become the Dark Knight trilogy. Nolan brought Bruce Wayne/Batman to the modern world in one of the most grounded versions of the character to date, and the second installment of the trilogy, The Dark Knight, is regarded as one of the greatest superhero movies ever. Following his time in the superhero genre, Nolan returned with the sci-fi movie Interstellar, the war movie Dunkirk, and the sci-fi thriller Tenet – and yet, he still hasn’t been able to make what he describes as his best movie.
In 2002, Nolan made the transition to studio filmmaking with Insomnia, his first project with Warner Bros., which was a critical and commercial hit. After that, Nolan began working on a Howard Hughes biographical movie. Pre-production on this project went as far as to have Jim Carrey attached to play the lead role, with Nolan saying this was the role Carrey was “born to play”. Nolan even told The Daily Beast he thinks it’s the best script he has ever written, and that he “had a really wonderful experience writing it”, but the project didn’t move forward as another director was also working on his own Howard Hughes movie: Martin Scorsese and The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes. Speaking to Deadline in 2017, Nolan shared he still wanted to make his Howard Hughes movie, but there haven’t been any updates on it since then.
Howard Hughes was a business magnate, pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist, who during his lifetime was known as one of the most financially successful men in the world. As a film producer and director, he was behind big-budget movies that ended up being controversial, as were The Racket, Hell’s Angels, and Scarface. In his last years, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle (caused in part by his obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain from a plane crash, and increasing deafness), spending his final years in Las Vegas, where he even bought the Desert Inn as he refused to leave the hotel and to avoid conflicts with the owners. Hughes passed away in 1976, and he was in such poor physical condition that the FBI had to use fingerprints to conclusively identify the body. Scorsese’s The Aviator is based on the book Howard Hughes: The Secret Life by Charles Higham, and covers Hughes' life from 1927 to 1947 – Nolan’s project was reportedly focused on the later, more chaotic years of Hughes’ life, which combined with his storytelling style would have made a unique drama movie about one of the most interesting and eccentric men in the industry.
Once Christopher Nolan put his Howard Hughes project away, he teamed-up with Warner Bros. again to make Batman Begins, and the rest is history. Whether he will finally make his Howard Hughes movie or not remains to be seen, but he now seems to be more focused on a different type of movies, mostly those sci-fi oriented and that can give him space to question complex concepts like time, though it would definitely be interesting to see his take on Howard Hughes’ life, eccentricities, and issues, all with Jim Carrey as the lead.