The Odyssey arrives in theaters this summer, and filmmaker Christopher Nolan now has another job: the President of the Directors Guild of America.
In that role, he’ll tackle the challenges faced by the union’s 20,000+ members, ranging from AI to Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Pictures. While Paramount Pictures is still fighting to get its hands on the studio, a merger of this scale has raised major concerns in Hollywood and sits at the forefront of Nolan’s mind.
“We have very, very significant concerns about how this is all going to happen,” Nolan told Variety in his first interview since being named DGA President last September. “I think it’s a very worrying time for the industry. The loss of a major studio is a huge blow.”
“We’re interested to hear more about the specifics of how they’re going to run these things,” he continued before chiming in on Netflix’s commitment to give movies a 45-day theatrical run (the DGA is pushing for 60 days).
Nolan added, “There are encouraging noises, but that’s not the same as commitments. The theatrical window becomes a sort of easily graspable symbol of whether Warner Bros. will be run as a theatrical distributor or whether it be folded in as a streamer. But the reality is, the issues on the television side and the streaming side are far more important to our membership.”
The director, who many of you will know best for helming Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, also shared his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s proposed 100% tariff on movies filmed overseas.
“I don’t know how a tariff system would work,” he mused, choosing his words carefully. “I will say that since President Trump has started bandying these ideas around, there’s a much more serious conversation from the studios about how to improve the situation in the United States — to be perfectly frank about it.”
“The way we see it, you want a stackable, 25% federal rebate that you can combine with your state rebates and be competitive with other places in the world that are siphoning production from the United States because of the excellent incentives that they have.”
There’s a great deal of uncertainty in Hollywood at the moment, particularly as it’s become abundantly clear that people are moving away from the theatrical experience to watch movies at home.
Ultimately, Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Bros. may just be bringing us closer to a world where audiences watching movies on streaming becomes the norm. That’s obviously concerning to Nolan, who is a huge proponent of the big-screen experience.
He’s also looking out for his fellow directors to make sure that they’re treated and compensated fairly at a time when studios are looking to cut costs due to diminishing box office returns.