Tag: Jonathan Nolan

The Return Of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar Gets Delayed

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Image: Paramount Pictures

Christopher Nolan didn’t release a movie this year, so theaters are bringing back one of his old ones to compensate. Interstellar was set to return to theaters next month but will instead be delayed until December, Variety reports.

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The 2014 space epic starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain will hit theaters again on December 6 instead of September 27 as originally planned. The revival marks the 10th anniversary of Nolan’s ninth movie and will include 70mm IMAX showings.

Interstellar tracks astronauts on a mission to find a new habitable planet for Earth’s remaining residents to flee to. It’s a movie about the destruction of the planet and the power of love, and one of Nolan’s more emotional and human projects. It’s the only time he’s worked with McConaughey, and the actor gave one of his best performances in it at the peak of the McConaissance (Dallas Buyer’s Club was a year earlier).

So why the delay? “The theatrical release date was pushed to align with the home entertainment relaunch,” Variety reports. I have no idea what that really means since Interstellar is already available at home, but the publication says Paramount disputes recent rumors that the shift was due to lost or destroyed copies of the original 70mm reels.

Instead, Paramount says it has plenty of archived copies of the movie, but that some film reels experience wear and tear from standard use. The company adds that it’s normal for them to become unusable after their original theatrical runs. I guess Paramount just didn’t want to get clobbered by Transformers One at the box office that month.

Whatever the case, it’ll be worth it to wait a few extra months so fans can once again witness one of the coolest space sequences in film on the big screen. It’ll also be interesting to reappraise one of Nolan’s headiest movies (he co-wrote it with his brother, Jonathan Nolan). A recent viral TikTok popularized an entirely inverted interpretation of the movie that’s full of holes but fun to contemplate on a re-watch.

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Ethan Gach

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August 7, 2024
Jonathan Nolan and Michael Emerson on How ‘Fallout’ Went From a ‘Summer Vacation Lark’ to a Limb-Exploding Adventure

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Yesterday, we shared my interview with Fallout stars Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten as they discussed the upcoming Prime Video series from the point of view of their characters. Today, our Fallout coverage continues with a mini Person of Interest reunion.

I got to chat with Fallout executive producer Jonathan Nolan and cast member Michael Emerson, who’ve worked together before on Nolan’s first TV series, Person of Interest, where Emerson played Harold Finch for five seasons.

In Fallout, Emerson plays a mysterious character known only as “Wilzig,” a man being pursued by several entities in the Wasteland, who has a connection to a prominent organization in Fallout lore.

It’s well known that Nolan is a huge fan of the Fallout series. For some creators, it’s daunting to try to adapt something they love so much, and so they prefer “not to touch it.” So, I asked Nolan what it was about his experience of playing this series of games that made him feel like he had to be the one to bring this world to live action.

“I don’t know that it was about feeling that it had to be me, but I certainly had never experienced anything like the tone of the games,” Nolan says. “The retro-futurism of it. The violence of it. The political commentary of it, and the humor of it. I’d never felt all of those things brought together. So that, for me, felt like something I would be excited to share with, I’m not going to say a ‘larger audience,’ but maybe the audience including people who hadn’t had the opportunity to play the games and people who had and wanted to see another chapter in this story.”

Staying firmly in spoiler-free territory, I had to ask Emerson what drew him to this project and the role of Wilzig, especially since his participation in the story is … interesting, to say the least.

Of course, Emerson was drawn to “the pedigree of the project” and the fact that it was being put together by people he loved working with. “It looked like it might be kind of a summer vacation lark. It was a little more than that when push came to shove, but it was an adventure! And it was good fun. And technically amazing!”

Emerson seemed like a kid describing a great summer vacation when he went on to say, “And I got my foot blown off! And other indignities!”

“Not just your foot! Not just your foot, sadly,” Nolan chimed in.

Seriously, y’all. Wilzig’s whole deal is bananas. We can expect his presence to be “felt through the season.”

While both Nolan and Emerson hope that those who have no experience with the Fallout games might be inspired to try the games by watching this show, they are very clear that this is not a show “for the whole family.”

“Leave the kids at home,” Nolan says. Considering how many body parts explode on this show? That’s probably for the best.

Fallout arrives on Prime Video on April 11. Check out my full interview with Nolan and Emerson at our TMS YouTube channel:

(featured image: screencap/Prime Video)

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Teresa Jusino

Teresa Jusino (she/her) is a native New Yorker and a proud Puerto Rican, Jewish, bisexual woman with ADHD. She’s been writing professionally since 2010 and was a former TMS assistant editor from 2015-18. Now, she’s back as a contributing writer. When not writing about pop culture, she’s writing screenplays and is the creator of your future favorite genre show. Teresa lives in L.A. with her brilliant wife. Her other great loves include: Star Trek, The Last of Us, anything by Brian K. Vaughan, and her Level 5 android Paladin named Lal.

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Teresa Jusino

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April 4, 2024
Fallout’s TV Show is Made By Fans, but Not for Only Fans

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Image: Prime Video

Adapting any well-known property is always going to be a big feat, especially when it comes to video games. It’s one thing to adapt a comic or TV show, it’s another thing to adapt a series of games, which come with a greater degree of self-expression. You can please some fans, but you can’t please all of the fans, as we’ve seen with basically every game-to-TV/film adaptation within the last five years.

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Talking to T3, Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan said as such about the upcoming Fallout show. Like many, he came into the series with Fallout 3 all the way back in 2008, which he said consumed roughly a year of his life back in the day. At the time, he would’ve been working on quite a few projects, and he was frank in saying the RPG “almost derailed my entire career.” Fallout fans have been divided on the series for some time (see early reactions to Fallout 76), and Nolan similarly it was impossible for the show to please the whole community.

“It’s a fool’s errand,” he said. “You’ve got to make yourself happy.” with Fallout, he continued, was for everyone to “come into this trying to make the show that you want to make.” Considering previous interviews, it doesn’t sound like this show is going to wildly diverge from those games, but they are going to have their own spin on series staples that’ll likely rankle longtime lovers. Between this and his Batman work, he called it a “rare and unbelievable thing…to take something that you love and get a chance to play in that universe, to create your own version.”

No doubt he’d like for it to be a big multi-season hit like Westworld and Person of Interest, but he sounded honest in saying he was “very happy” with how this series has turned out. We’ll find out whether he should be happy when all eight episodes of Fallout will hit Prime Video on April 11.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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Justin Carter

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March 16, 2024
Palworld, Hogwarts Legacy, And More Of The Week's Biggest Gaming News

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Clockwise from bottom left: Tom Hiddleston in Loki (Photo: Marvel Studios), Aramis Knight and Iman Vellani in Ms. Marvel (Photo: Disney+), Tatiana Maslany in She-Hulk: Attorney At Law (Photo: Disney+), Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in WandaVision (Photo: Disney+/Marvel Studios), Samuel L. Jackson in Secret Invasion (Photo: Gareth Gatrell/Marvel), Oscar Isaac in Moon Knight (Photo: Marvel Studios), Alaqua Cox in Echo (Photo: Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios)
Graphic: Jimmy Hasse

Updated 1/12: The MCU shows no signs of getting any smaller, does it? And now that Echo is here, it’s time to see where it sits in our ranking, from worst to best, of the whopping 26 Marvel shows that have premiered since 2013. Prepare for some ambitious Netflix fare, sturdy star vehicles, head trips like Legion, and—hang on, Helstrom, we’re getting to you—those not-so-hot titles, too. Dig in and let the non-superpowered fighting commence. – Sam Barsanti Read More

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Kotaku Staff

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January 21, 2024
Amazon’s First Official Fallout TV Show Artwork Is An AI-Looking Eyesore

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Amazon recently revealed that its Fallout TV show will begin streaming in 2024 by tweeting a 1950s-looking postcard from Los Angeles, California with Vault Boy giving the thumbs up. Upon closer inspection, fans have noticed a lot of weird anomalies that have some thinking it might actually be AI-generated.

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At first I paid the image no mind. It was tweeted out on August 23 while a teaser for the show debuted for attendees at Gamescom 2023. Then I saw this tweet by a developer who goes by “Kenney” and makes free game assets. “Amazon ($514 billion dollar in revenue) is incapable of hiring an actual artist,” they wrote. The tweet’s replies were filled with observations of strange wrinkles in the art that make it seem an awful lot like AI may have had a hand in making it, or at least someone who’s very sloppy with Photoshop.

First, there’s the palm tree in front of the yellow building that’s clearly disjointed.

Image: Bethesda / Amazon / Kotaku

Then there’s the woman’s legs on the left. She has three of them and one disappears into some white flowers.

Image: Bethesda / Amazon / Kotaku

The red taxi near the front is all backwards. The headlights and hood are in the rear, while the driving wheel is in the front.

Image: Bethesda / Amazon

The central boulevard with the pedestrians is also confusing. The sidewalk is as wide as the street, and then there are cars on the other side of it that are going in the same direction.

Image: Bethesda / Amazon / Kotaku

Plus, as you go further into the background, the cars get messier and messier, and appear to just be alternating patterns of blue and red like they were stacked on top of one another and then stretched into the horizon.

Image: Bethesda / Amazon

It’s not hard to find other suspicious deficiencies, too.

“I’ve been staring at this picture for quite a while and still people find new weird stuff,” Kenney tweeted. “Also there’s still people saying it’s not AI…” Even if it’s not AI it’s still not great. To Kenney’s original point, it reeks of a company cheaping out instead of paying talented people to do what they’re good at.

“It’s a shame that Amazon took the cheapest route by generating the artwork without even taking the time to do any sort of quality control,” Kenney commented to Kotaku. “I’m sure a lot of artists would’ve absolutely loved the opportunity to do the art for this. There’s a long history of film and TV adaptations that didn’t pay enough respect to their source material, but I think generating art using AI is the most disrespectful thing that could be done. It’s the lowest of effort, it’s literally not doing any effort.”

Amazon and Bethesda did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read More: AI Creating ‘Art’ Is An Ethical And Copyright Nightmare

The Fallout TV show is being led by Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan, and wrapped up filming earlier this year. While the promotional art references Los Angeles and Vault 33, little else is known about the series, which was previously confirmed to be separate from the main storyline of the hit post-apocalyptic open-world RPG series. After watching the recent closed-doors teaser, IGN wrote, “While we only had a very small look at the show, it’s clear that the production values are high, with the visual effects looking impressive.”

Even more bizarre, then, that the first official art delivers the opposite impression. The timing also couldn’t be worse. Hollywood writers and actors are both on strike right now over streaming royalties and concerns about the use of AI in filmmaking, including by Amazon. The Writers Guild of America blasted the company along with the other streaming giants in a recent report, accusing them of anti-competitive mergers and vertical integrations. These historic strikes passed the 100-day mark earlier this month.

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Ethan Gach

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August 24, 2023
Sci-fi drama ‘Westworld’ canceled by HBO after 4 seasons

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — HBO has pulled the plug on “Westworld,” its Emmy-winning sci-fi drama.

The series’ cancellation came less than three months after its fourth season concluded in August. The cast included Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Aaron Paul and Thandiwe Newton.

Newton earned a best supporting actress Emmy in 2018, and the series received more than 50 nominations and won nine awards from the TV academy.

In a statement Friday, HBO thanked series creators and executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy for taking “viewers on a mind-bending odyssey, raising the bar at every step,” and saluted the “immensely talented” actors and crew.

In October, Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter that he hoped HBO would order a fifth season to properly end the series that debuted in 2016 as a ratings success for the cable channel. Viewership fell in the third season and again in the fourth.

Like the 1973 film that inspired it, also titled “Westworld,” the series was initially set in a Western-style amusement park that allowed guests to realize their fantasies with the help of androids. The show later broadened into a artificial intelligence vs. human global conflict.

“We’ve been privileged to tell these stories about the future of consciousness — both human and beyond — in the brief window of time before our AI overlords forbid us from doing so,” Nolan and Joy’s Kilter Films said in a statement.

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November 7, 2022
Sci-fi drama ‘Westworld’ canceled by HBO after 4 seasons

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LOS ANGELES — HBO has pulled the plug on “Westworld,” its Emmy-winning sci-fi drama.

The series’ cancellation came less than three months after its fourth season concluded in August. The cast included Evan Rachel Wood, Ed Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Aaron Paul and Thandiwe Newton.

Newton earned a best supporting actress Emmy in 2018, and the series received more than 50 nominations and won nine awards from the TV academy.

In a statement Friday, HBO thanked series creators and executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy for taking “viewers on a mind-bending odyssey, raising the bar at every step,” and saluted the “immensely talented” actors and crew.

In October, Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter that he hoped HBO would order a fifth season to properly end the series that debuted in 2016 as a ratings success for the cable channel. Viewership fell in the third season and again in the fourth.

Like the 1973 film that inspired it, also titled “Westworld,” the series was initially set in a Western-style amusement park that allowed guests to realize their fantasies with the help of androids. The show later broadened into a artificial intelligence vs. human global conflict.

“We’ve been privileged to tell these stories about the future of consciousness — both human and beyond — in the brief window of time before our AI overlords forbid us from doing so,” Nolan and Joy’s Kilter Films said in a statement.

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November 4, 2022