The Oscar favorite generated nearly a billion dollars at the box office and has paid off big for its director, who made the ultimate Hollywood bet—on himself.
By Matt Craig, Forbes Staff
Oppenheimer has transformed this Sunday’s Oscars ceremony from a competition into a coronation. Assuming it sweeps the 96th Academy Awards—as oddsmakers are predicting— the atomic bomb biopic will be the highest-grossing Best Picture winner in 20 years and one of the highest ever (behind only Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Titanic) with nearly $1 billion in global box office receipts. It’s the kind of rare critical and commercial success that will boost the careers of many involved, and for director Christopher Nolan, it cements his status as the most bankable auteur in Hollywood.
One talent manager who represents A-listers puts it a different way: “He’s the biggest movie star in the world right now.”
The 53-year-old Nolan is certainly being paid like one. Forbes estimates he is earning 15% of Oppenheimer’s “first-dollar gross,” meaning he gets paid a share of every cent the movie earns even before the studio recoups its expenses. From the box office haul, home video sales and licensing the movie’s first streaming window alone, Nolan will make an estimated $72 million pre-tax, after paying fees to his agent and lawyer ($85 million gross). The total will continue to rise as the movie gets re-sold to streamers and is licensed for years to come.
Bomb Squad: Nolan directing "Oppenheimer' star Cillian Murphy, whom he calls one of the great actors of his generation."
Universal Pictures/AlamyIt’s a new career peak for the Nolan—a frequent Oscar nominee for directing and screenwriting—who managed to produce a smash hit out of a three-hour movie, partially shot in black-and-white, about the life of a theoretical physicist. Even with his headier movie concepts, Nolan has excelled at creating the spectacle that still draws audiences into theaters, whether it’s a Paris street bending on top of itself in Inception, passing through the eye of a black hole in Interstellar, or detonating an atomic bomb in Oppenheimer. Every studio movie he has produced, since first partnering with Warner Bros. for 2002’s Insomnia, has grossed at least $100 million at the box office, and six of his last seven films—most notably the final two Dark Knight films—have grossed more than $500 million (the seventh, TeneT, was released in the thick of the pandemic and still tallied an impressive $350 million).
That track record made Nolan a cornerstone of Warner Bros. But in December 2020, after the studio announced it would be putting all theatrical releases on its streaming service the same day, Nolan took his disappointment public.
“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, adding, “they don’t even understand what they’re losing.”
The most notable loss, it turned out, was Nolan. When it came time to sell his next project in September 2021, executives from Paramount, Sony, Universal and Apple were summoned to his office in the Hollywood Hills to read the Oppenheimer script—Nolan famously keeps his scripts offline—and make their pitch.
With multiple studios angling for the prestige project, Nolan had the leverage to demand several pre-conditions for potential partners, including a $100 million production budget (relatively modest, by his standards), another $100 million for marketing, total creative control, an extended theatrical window, a blackout period during which the studio would not release anything in the weeks before and after his movie, and 20 percent of first-dollar gross.
Earning gross points remains Hollywood’s ultimate indication of power. Among actors, the deal term has been all but eliminated, other than a small handful of older stars such as Tom Cruise (who earned an estimated 12.5% of gross for his latest Mission: Impossible movie). Even for multihyphenate filmmakers, it’s reserved for the highest echelon of reliable moneymakers—such as Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Peter Jackson.
Eventually, Universal’s studio head Donna Langley agreed to Nolan’s conditions and landed Oppenheimer. Sources tell Forbes that Nolan’s deal with Universal included 15% of the gross, rather than the 20 he sought, though the discrepancy could come from the participation of Emma Thomas, Nolan’s wife and producing partner of more than 20 years. In the case of first-dollar gross deals, all up-front fees are an advance against the back-end participation, but in order to stay within the proposed budget, Nolan would have had to reduce his guaranteed fees for directing, writing and producing than he could have otherwise commanded. The deal he struck with Universal was the ultimate bet on himself.
Golden Couple: With 'Oppenheimer,' Nolan and his wife, producer Emma Thomas, have swept Hollywood's awards season
Gilbert Flores/Golden Globes/Getty ImagesThe movie went into production in early 2022 and a release date was set for July 2023. Later, Warner Bros. announced it would be releasing its summer blockbuster, Barbie, on the same day, which some in Hollywood saw as a direct response to Nolan’s departure. During a conversation for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series, Barbie star Margot Robbie revealed that Oppenheimer producer Chuck Roven had called her to ask that Barbie be moved to a different release date. “I was like, ‘We’re not moving our date,” Robbie responded. “If you’re scared to be up against us, then you move your date.’”
And so “Barbenheimer” was born—a pseudo-rivalry that each side’s marketing teams whipped into a global phenomenon. Barbie and Oppenheimer became the first and third highest-grossing movies in the world in 2023. Oppenheimer earned more than $957 million at the box office, and once theaters took their roughly 50% cut (the number could be as low as 20% on opening weekend, but goes up over time), Nolan was set up for a massive payday.
The director has now achieved an almost cult-like influence over the filmgoing community, who see him as a champion of the sanctity of the cinematic experience. Before Oppenheimer’s release, Nolan had advocated that viewers see the movie in IMAX, preferably 70mm IMAX, the giant format in which the movie was filmed (also, coincidentally, the most expensive ticket). It became the fourth-highest grossing IMAX movie of all time, accounting for $183.2 million or nearly 20% of the total haul. Similarly, prior to the movie’s on-demand and physical release in November, Nolan said it was important to own the movie on Blu-ray “so no evil streaming service can come steal it from you.” Universal reported it sold out of 4K Blu-rays in less than a week, scrambling to restock to keep up with demand.
Given the enormous success of Oppenheimer commercially and critically, the battle for Nolan’s next project promises to be even more intense. Last year, Variety reported that Warner Bros. sent him a seven-figure royalty check, no strings attached, as an advance against his eventual back-end earnings for 2020’s TeneT. The studio also put TeneT back in theaters (IMAX, of course), partially to ride the wave of support for the director and partially, no doubt, in an attempt to repair the relationship. “We’re hoping to get Nolan back,” Warner Bros. co-CEO Michael De Luca told Variety. “I think there’s a world.”
When asked what Nolan’s next deal might look like, one top entertainment lawyer puts it simply: “Whatever he wants it to be.”
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