Christopher Nolan Says He’d Love to Make a Horror Movie… If He Finds “a Really Exceptional Idea”

Christopher Nolan has made a few movies throughout his career that could be considered horror-adjacent, from 2002’s Insomnia to last year’s Oscar-nominee Oppenheimer.

“Oppenheimer has elements of horror in it definitely, as I think is appropriate to the subject matter,” Nolan himself said at an event at London’s British Film Institute this week.

But what about a full-on horror movie from Christopher Nolan? At the same event, the celebrated filmmaker explained that he’d indeed love to make a true horror movie someday.

“I think horror films are very interesting because they depend on very cinematic devices, it really is about a visceral response to things and so, at some point, I’d love to make a horror film,” Nolan said during the BFI conversation (thanks to Variety for the quotes).

He continued, “But I think a really good horror film requires a really exceptional idea. And those are few and far between. So I haven’t found a story that lends itself to that.”

Nolan also touched upon what appeals to him about the horror genre.

“But I think it’s a very interesting genre from a cinematic point of view. It’s also one of the few genres where the studios make a lot of these films, and they are films that have a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction. They have a lot of the qualities that Hollywood is generally very resistant to putting in films, but that’s a genre where it’s allowable,” Nolan explained.

These comments are similar to comments Quentin Tarantino made back in 2019, before we knew anything about his upcoming tenth – and reportedly final – movie. At the time we were still hopeful that his final movie could be a horror movie, and Tarantino noted in an interview that he wasn’t ruling it out; now that we know more, well, it doesn’t seem to be the case.

Tarantino had noted, “If I come up with a terrific horror film story, I *will* do that as my tenth film.” He added, “I love horror movies. I would love to do a horror film.”