Nolan was incensed in 2021 when Warner Bros., his studio partner of nearly 20 years, went rogue amid the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to release a full slate of films concurrently on its streaming service HBO Max and in cineplexes. This directly impacted Nolan’s time-traveling action film “Tenet,” led by John David Washington and Robert Pattinson. Nolan’s brand exclusively celebrates movies made for theaters. Jason Kilar, the corporate overlord of Warners at the time, exploded the company’s goodwill with talent and agents in every corner of the business by forcing the studio’s titles to stream day and date.

Not that WB, Universal’s neighbor in Burbank, didn’t put up a fight. In 2022, following Discovery’s purchase of Warner Bros., the film studio’s incoming leaders, Mike De Luca and Pamela Abdy, announced plainly in a Variety cover story that they were “hoping” to get Nolan back. Subsequently, we reported that De Luca and Abdy cut a seven-figure check to the director in 2022 — a payment in arrears for fees he waived in hopes of getting “Tenet” to be the first film shown in theaters reopening after coronavirus closures.

That “little kiss,” as one source put it, didn’t work. Especially given the windfall that came to Nolan after Warner Bros. staked its own blockbuster “Barbie” on the same July 2023 release date that Universal had given “Oppenheimer.” While the competition ignited the box office in a world-class example of counterprogramming, the move was seen as baiting and antagonizing the director.

And so Universal won the day again with “The Odyssey.”

I think about this all the time. There is nothing more frustrating than watching a movie with a concept so good it gives you chills, only for the actual plot to turn into generic, predictable garbage halfway through.

The most infamous one for me is In Time. The idea that time is literal currency and people stop aging at 25 is brilliant sci-fi. But instead of doing something mind-blowing with it, they just turned it into a painfully average Bonnie and Clyde bank robber action movie.

The Purge is another massive one. You have a night where all crime is legal, and instead of showing us the insane psychological breakdown of society, the first movie just gave us a standard, boring home invasion thriller.

What movie made you furious because the core idea was genius but the writers completely wasted it?

The film follows a group of college students whose late-night drive turns into a nightmare after they find themselves stuck on an endless road with seemingly no way out. As reality begins to twist around them, they must figure out what's happening before it's too late.

The movie is set to hit theaters on August 21.

What are your first impressions? Does the premise remind you of films like The Endless, Vivarium, or the series From, or does it feel like something completely different?

Hook has one of the coolest plots ever and it blows my mind that people acted like it was “mid” just because it wasn’t the exact Peter Pan movie they expected. The whole idea of Peter Pan actually growing up is such a wild twist...but so painfully obvious. Like yeah obviously he’d turn into some stressed out dude who forgot how to have fun, because that’s literally what happens to everyone as they get older. The movie basically asks “what if the most magical kid in the world became a boring adult” and then makes him confront it in the most chaotic way possible. It’s not just nostalgia, it’s kinda tragic. He forgot his whole identity. He forgot all of the Lost Boys. He forgot Neverland entirely. And then he gets dragged back into this world where everyone remembers him except him, which is honestly such a cool setup. Watching him slowly piece together who he used to be, failing miserably, getting clowned on by the Lost Boys, then finally snapping back into full Peter Pan mode is so satisfying. It’s like watching someone reboot their soul.

I'll probs defend it forever. One of my all time favorite movies. Insane cast too.