Christopher Nolan Says He'll Never Make A Movie For Netflix

These days, everyone's obsessed with Netflix. Well, everyone except Christopher Nolan. 

The director behind films like Inception, The Dark Knight, and the upcoming war epic Dunkirk has a big bone to pick with the streaming service. Speaking with IndieWire, Nolan revealed that he isn't a fan of Netflix's policies and apparent deprecation of the theatrical experience, and said he would never make a film for Netflix. 

When asked if he would ever collaborate with Netflix for a film, Nolan responded, "No... why would you? If you make a theatrical film, it's to be played in theaters." 

Nolan continued, "Netflix has a bizarre aversion to supporting theatrical films. They have this mindless policy of everything having to be simultaneously streamed and released, which is obviously an untenable model for theatrical presentation. So they're not even getting in the game, and I think they're missing a huge opportunity."

Nolan used Amazon, the everything-in-one-place site that releases its movies in theaters before bringing them to its platform, as an example of what streaming services should do in efforts to not undermine the traditional cinematic experience. "You can see that Amazon is very clearly happy to not make that same mistake," said Nolan. "The theaters have a 90-day window. It's a perfectly usable model. It's terrific." 

The filmmaker continued, speaking about how Netflix gives larger budgets and creative freedom allocations to its global directors, something he finds unimpressive and bewildering. "I think the investment that Netflix is putting into interesting filmmakers and interesting projects would be more admirable if it weren't being used as some kind of bizarre leverage against shutting down theaters," he said. "It's so pointless. I don't really get it."

Nolan got down to brass tacks in stating, "The only platform I'm interested in talking about is theatrical exhibition... If Netflix has made a great film, they should put it in theaters. Why not? Stream it 90 days later." 

But for Nolan, the problem didn't begin when Netflix gained popularity; it started with the birth of home video. "Your worst nightmare in the '90s as a filmmaker was that the studio would turn around and go, 'You know what? We're going to put it on video instead of theaters.' They did that all the time. There's nothing new in that," he stated.

While this is an interesting perspective to hear coming from the acclaimed film director, it isn't too surprising given his reputation for creating movies meant to be played in theaters. Nolan has often optimized his films for 70mm and IMAX showings. 

Nolan may never make a movie for Netflix, but there's still plenty to watch on the streaming service. Check out the 20 best movies on Netflix right now.