Steven Spielberg was supposed to direct ‘Interstellar’: “A much better movie in Chris Nolan’s hands”
Steven Spielberg has made a rare comment on Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s critically acclaimed sci-fi movie, revealing that he was initially slated to direct the project for an entire year.
In a new interview with Empire, Spielberg has revealed that he was attached to the 2016 film for a year. He was also the one who hired Nolan’s brother, Jonathan, to write the movie in the first instance.
“I was involved with Interstellar for a year,” Spielberg said, explaining, “Kip Thorne brought me the project with Lynda Obst, the producer, and I became fascinated with it.”
His involvement in the project went deeper than just commissioning a script: “I spent a lot of time at the [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] in Pasadena, California, talking to the scientists there and the aerospace engineers.”
Reminiscing on how far along the project was, Spielberg revealed, “I actually hired Chris Nolan’s brother Jonah to write the first and second draft for me, but it didn’t stick.”
From there, it was Jonathan who heralded Nolan’s involvement in the movie: Spielberg added, “Jonah actually said, ‘If there comes a point where you decide not to make this movie, I can tell you who’s gonna grab it. He’s already bugging me about it. And that’s my brother Chris.'”
Spielberg added, “He was absolutely right. The second I decided not to make it, Chris jumped on board, probably the next day. Interstellar was a much better movie in Chris Nolan’s hands than it would have been in mine.”
Famously, from there Nolan hopped aboard the film just after his third and final Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, in 2012.
The mind-bending sci-fi movie stars Matthew McConaughey as Coop, a NASA pilot who is forced out of retirement on a once-in-a-lifetime mission to uncover habitable planets as a solution to a dying Earth’s population. Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine also star.
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