Director Steven Spielberg revealed to Empire magazine (via Total Film) at the Disclosure Day press tour that he only worked on Interstellar for one year before leaving the project and being replaced by Christopher Nolan. The Oscar winner was brought on to the project by producer Linda Obst and astrophysicist Kip Thorne, who served as the film’s scientific consultant.
“I worked on ‘Interstellar’ for a year…and I was completely captivated,” Spielberg admitted. “I spent a lot of time at the (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) in Pasadena, California, talking to the scientists and aerospace engineers there.”
“I actually had Chris Nolan’s brother (Jonathan) write the first and second drafts, but they didn’t stick,” he continued. “In fact, Jonah said, ‘If the decision comes that we’re not going to make this movie, I’ll tell you who’s going to get it. He’s already bugging me about it, and that’s my brother Chris.’ He was absolutely right. The moment I decided I wasn’t going to make it, maybe the next day, Chris jumped in. ‘Interstellar’ was a much better movie in Chris Nolan’s hands than it would have been in my hands.”
“Interstellar” was released in theaters in November 2014 and grossed $681 million worldwide during its premiere, earning five Oscar nominations and winning Best Visual Effects. Matthew McConaughey headlines the film as a NASA pilot who embarks on a space mission to save Earth from extinction. Starring Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, and Timothée Chalamet.
Nolan recently unpacked Interstellar with Chalamet at a screening in Los Angeles in March and talked about the film’s jump from Spielberg’s project to Nolan’s work.
“Shortly after we collaborated on The Dark Knight, my brother got a job and I started working with Stephen. I started calling him Stephen. He’s Mr. Spielberg to you,” Nolan told Chalamet. “He worked on it for years. He had a great idea and went through various iterations, but whatever it was, it never really hit its stride until Stephen was ready to make it. Stephen went off to make another movie, so it became available.”
Nolan continued, “I talked to Jonathan a lot over the years and talked about what he was doing and what his ambitions were. I was excited about it. I was incredibly struck by his first performance. I was working on the idea of time travel…watching time. I had a half-baked project that I hadn’t committed to, and when it became available, it was a case of me saying to Jonathan, “How would you feel if I combined this with some of my ideas and tried to change the image?” He was fine with that. He could see that the spirit of what I was trying to do was to get to what he was excited about in the first place. ”
Reviews for “Interstellar” were far more mixed than previous critically acclaimed works in Nolan’s work, such as “The Dark Knight.” Many critics thought Nolan might have toyed with the film’s more heartwarming and sentimental storyline, which just happened to be Spielberg’s forte.
“I had a producer anonymously say to me, ‘He’s a cold guy who makes cold movies,’ and that stuck with me for a few projects after that,” Nolan recalled. “The reason I was drawn to my brother’s first performance is because it’s about family and humanity and it’s very emotional. That’s the movie I wanted to make. This is a movie with that heart.”
