Christopher Nolan has spent a directing career chasing wormholes, dream heists and the atomic bomb, but he says one genre still scares him: romantic comedy. The Oscar-winning filmmaker made the admission Thursday night during his first appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” where he sat down to promote “The Odyssey,” his 70mm IMAX adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. Fallon needled Nolan about tackling something lighter for his next project, floating the idea of a Nolan-directed rom-com. Nolan didn’t take the bait.
He called the genre brutally difficult to pull off and said filmmakers who work in comedy face a level of exposure he doesn’t envy. Unlike a drama that can absorb a flat scene here or there, he explained, comedy leaves nowhere to hide when a joke doesn’t land with an audience.
Horror is a different story. Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter this month that shooting the visceral, nightmarish sequences in “The Odyssey” has left him hungry to direct a full horror film, provided the concept is strong enough to justify it. He pointed to the 1976 thriller “Obsession” as the kind of high-concept execution he’d want to match.
The Fallon appearance capped a monthslong promotional blitz for “The Odyssey,” which pulled in $264 million globally on its opening weekend and has stayed near the top of the box office into its second week. Nolan detailed the film’s scale for Fallon: a cast and crew numbering in the thousands, more than 90 days of shooting across six countries, and a 60-foot animatronic creature built for one of the film’s set pieces. The production marks the first time a feature has been shot entirely on 70mm IMAX cameras, a technical milestone Nolan has pursued since “Dunkirk.”
The film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus alongside Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson and Charlize Theron, with cast members rotating through Fallon’s studio for a week of appearances ahead of the release. Nolan closed out that run himself, fielding questions about practical effects, ancient Greek mythology and, apparently, what he still won’t direct.
