The Best Christopher Nolan Movie Almost Turned Into a Horror Film That Was Turned Down By Will Smith

Christopher Nolan has always defied the limitations of art and science by playing outside the sandbox to develop a genre entirely of his own making. No two Nolan movies have ever been similar in that respect and the director’s obsession with the complex nature of time has lent him the ability to craft stories that are more original than most films over the last couple of decades.

Beyond the insidious psychopathy of The Dark Knight, the war homage of Dunkirk, the sci-fi epic of Interstellar, and the Oscar-winning existential threat of Oppenheimer lies a visionary genius who captures the magic of humanity through all its peaks and valleys. The only genre that has escaped a spot in Nolan’s filmography is horror – although the director intends to soon make it right.

Christopher Nolan Takes a Stroll Down Elm Street

Existing since the silent film era, horror has perfected the art of tapping into people’s psyche, tuning the mind into a hyperaware state of fear and anxiety, and lending an adrenaline rush that leaves the audience going back for more. As such, the most explored and profitable genre in the entertainment business is by far the one defined by the likes of Stephen King and Shirley Jackson.

For Christopher Nolan to then want a piece of the lucrative business is in itself an exciting option to consider. After sifting through every genre available to man, be it arthouse, indie, crime, thriller, sci-fi, war epic, biopic, or drama, Nolan intends to create his own Nightmare on Elm Street by finding a horror story that checks all his signature boxes.

Unfortunately, such a script is practically too good to lie around on a studio shelf, awaiting Nolan to divert his attention away from his elite body of work. At a British Film Institute event, the filmmaker admitted:

I think a really good horror film requires a really exceptional idea. And those are few and far between. So I haven’t found a story that lends itself to that.

However, that is not to say that Nolan doesn’t appreciate the genre in its entirety. According to him:

It’s one of the few genres where the studios make a lot of these films, and they are films that have a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction. They have a lot of the qualities that Hollywood is generally very resistant to putting in films, but that’s a genre where it’s allowable.

And Nolan is nothing if not a sucker for bleakness and abstraction, as he has proven time and again with nearly every film he has conceived, including works like Memento and The Prestige.

Christopher Nolan Feels the Pull of Horror

The post-Oppenheimer era is not the only time that Christopher Nolan has openly admitted to his interest in horror. The auteur filmmaker indulged, once before, in crafting a story that delved into the most harrowing subject of all – dreamscapes and psychological terror. Inception was originally conceived to be a horror film when Nolan had drummed up the plot’s basic blueprint.

I was thinking along the lines of a horror movie at first, but it eventually became this project. I was looking for a device whereby the dreams would become important to the story, and the thought that someone could invade your dream space and steal an idea is immensely compelling to me. The concept that dreams feel real while we’re in them underlies the whole film.

The 2010 film starring the who’s who of Hollywood A-listers has since been classified under the sci-fi action thriller genre. However, it would be remiss to entirely disregard Inception as not being a horror movie, considering how the lead protagonist is haunted and driven to self-destruction by his dead wife. In a way, the film does stand out as a tragic ghost story if the concept of a dream-within-a-dream is stripped down and the heart of the plot is left exposed.

Inception is currently streaming on Peacock.