Christopher Nolan BASHES Warner Bros. for shifting their 2021 movies from theaters to HBO Max

Director Christopher Nolan has spent the majority of his career at Warner Bros., but that hasn’t stopped the filmmaker from speaking out about the studio.

Warner Bros. announced last week in a rather shocking move that all of their 2021 films will be released simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max.

The director released a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on Monday, where he called HBO Max ‘the worst streaming service.’

Warner Bros. first made waves when they announced that Wonder Woman 1984 would be released both in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously on Christmas Day, just days before they announced their entire 2021 slate will have the same release.

Nolan has long been a proponent of the theatrical experience, with his film Tenet one of the few major studio films to get a wide release amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the film struggled at the domestic box office ($57.6 million), with several major markets still closed and many theaters elsewhere operating at limited capacity, it still fared well internationally, for a global total of $359.9 million. 

‘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,’ Nolan said.

‘Warner Bros. had an incredible machine for getting a filmmaker’s work out everywhere, both in theaters and in the home, and they are dismantling it as we speak,’ he added.

‘They don’t even understand what they’re losing. Their decision makes no economic sense, and even the most casual Wall Street investor can see the difference between disruption and dysfunction,’ the statement concluded.

The filmmaker also spoke with Entertainment Tonight with John David Washington, to promote the December 15 digital release of Tenet, where the usually-diplomatic filmmaker called the move, ‘very, very, very, very messy.’ 

When asked what his reaction to the move from Warner Bros., the studio that has distributed or co-distributed his last eight films, Nolan pulled no punches.

‘Oh, I mean, disbelief. Especially the way in which they did. There’s such controversy around it, because they didn’t tell anyone,’ Nolan began.

‘In 2021, they’ve got some of the top filmmakers in the world, they’ve got some of the biggest stars in the world who worked for years in some cases on these projects very close to their hearts that are meant to be big-screen experiences,’ Nolan added.

‘They’re meant to be out there for the widest possible audiences… And now they’re being used as a loss-leader for the streaming service — for the fledgling streaming service — without any consultation. So, there’s a lot of controversy. It’s very, very, very, very messy. A real bait and switch,’ the director said.

He added that this move was, ‘sort of not how you treat filmmakers and stars and people who, these guys have given a lot for these projects. They deserved to be consulted and spoken to about what was going to happen to their work.’

Tenet’s release was considerably challenging given the restrictions due to COVID-19, though Nolan was encouraged that ‘people came back in great numbers’ in areas where the virus was more under control.

He added it was a ‘source of frustration’ to not be able to travel the world and attend premieres around the world, but the filmmaker still realizes how lucky he really is.

‘But at the end of the day, 2020 has been a year of tremendous adversity for everybody on the planet, so we feel very lucky — I feel very lucky — to have been working and to have been engaged in a creative pursuit. I think it’s been a really fortunate thing for myself,’ he said.

When asked about the ‘long-term repercussions’ of Warner Bros.’ seismic shift to HBO Max, Nolan insisted theaters as a whole will bounce back.

‘Long-term, I think all of the studios know that the movie theater experience will bounce back and be a very important part of the ecosystem long-term. What you have right now in our business is a lot of the use of the pandemic as an excuse for sort of grappling for short-term advantage. And it’s really unfortunate,’ he said.

‘It’s not the way to do business and it’s not the best thing for the health of our industry,’ Nolan added.

‘But when the theaters are back and people are going back to the movies, when the vaccine has been rolled out and there’s an appropriate health response from the federal government, I’m very bullish on the long-term prospects of the industry. People love going to the movies and they’re going to get to go again,’ Nolan said.