Christopher Nolan says there’s no truth to rumors he’ll direct the next James Bond movie

There have been rumors that Christopher Nolan would direct the next James Bond movie for… well, ever, but the Oppenheimer director has officially shot them down.

“No, sadly no — no truth to those rumors,” Christopher Nolan recently told The Associated Press. As Nolan is a huge fan of the franchise, these rumors are easy to believe, but Bond franchise producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are unlikely to give Nolan the creative control he would want.

The latest rumor that Nolan would take on the Bond franchise emerged just two months ago, claiming that the director would helm multiple movies in the series and take on an executive producer role going forward. It also claimed that the next movie would be a full reboot with a period setting, and would stick more closely to Ian Fleming’s original novels.

Although there’s no truth to the rumors, there could be a day when Nolan finally decides to tackle Bond. “The influence of those movies in my filmography is embarrassingly apparent,” Nolan said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast this summer. “And so there’s no attempt to shy away from that. I love the films. You know, it would be an amazing privilege to do one. It has to be the right moment in your creative life where you can express what you want to express and really burrow into something within the appropriate constraints because you would never want to take on something like that and do it wrong. You wouldn’t want to take on a film not fully committed to what you bring to the table creatively. So as a writer, casting, everything, it’s a full package. You’d have to be really needed, you’d have to be really wanted in terms of bringing the totality of what you bring to a character. Otherwise, I’m very happy to be first in line to see whatever they do.”

With Daniel Craig calling it quits after No Time to Die, the long-running series will be reinvented yet again with a new actor taking on the role of James Bond. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was recently released on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD, with the director urging fans to buy the movie in a physical media format.

Would you like to see Christopher Nolan direct a James Bond movie one day?