Christopher Nolan Explains How INTERSTELLAR Changed After He Took Over From Steven Spielberg
When Interstellar first blasted into theaters in 2014, it didn’t just deliver a mind-bending sci-fi epic, it cemented its place as one of Christopher Nolan’s most beloved films.
But the version we know and love almost looked very different. Before Nolan stepped in, the project was being developed by Steven Spielberg, and now Nolan is opening up about how the film evolved once he took the reins.
During a recent Q&A with Timothée Chalamet at an IMAX 70mm screening at AMC Universal Citywalk IMAX in Los Angeles, Nolan reflected on the long journey that brought Interstellar to life. The conversation revealed how the movie shifted creatively after Spielberg moved on to another project.
According to Nolan, the film began with an idea from physicist Kip Thorne, who pitched it to Spielberg and Paramount. The concept was rooted in real science. Nolan explained it was essentially “doing a science fiction movie about looking out into the greater universe with real science behind it.”
That foundation stayed intact, but the path to the screen wasn’t straightforward.
Nolan revealed that his brother, Jonathan Nolan, landed the screenwriting job while they were in the middle of making The Dark Knight. Jonathan spent years developing the script, revising and reshaping it through multiple drafts.
Nolan said, “He worked on it for a lot of years. It had incredible ideas and moved through all these different iterations… But until Steven was ready to make it, whatever it is, it never quite got that momentum. Steven went off to do another film, so it became available.”
That’s when things changed. Nolan and his brother had been talking about the project for years. The ideas stuck with him, especially the emotional core and the scale of its ambition. At the same time, Nolan had been wrestling with his own concepts about time.
“I had been working on a time travel idea… things looking at time,” he said. “I had half-baked projects that I hadn’t committed to.”
Once Spielberg stepped away, Nolan saw an opportunity. He approached Jonathan with the idea of merging his own time-based concepts with the existing framework of Interstellar. Instead of starting from scratch, he wanted to reshape what was already there.
Jonathan was on board. Nolan explained, “He could tell the spirit of what I was trying to do was to get to what he was initially excited about it.”
That creative fusion ultimately gave us the Interstellar audiences experienced, an emotional story about love, sacrifice, and survival wrapped in high-concept astrophysics and time dilation. Nolan’s fascination with time became central to the film’s structure, pushing it beyond a traditional space exploration story into something far more personal and cerebral.
It’s interesting to think how different the movie might have been under Spielberg’s direction. Both filmmakers have distinct storytelling instincts. Spielberg leans into character-driven wonder and heart. Nolan gravitates toward complex narrative mechanics and big philosophical questions. The final version of Interstellar feels unmistakably Nolan, especially in the way it bends time into an emotional force.
Looking back, it’s clear that the shift in directors didn’t derail the project. If anything, it sharpened its identity. Interstellar went on to become a critical and commercial hit and remains one of Nolan’s most talked-about films more than a decade later.
Hearing Nolan break down that creative handoff makes the film even more fascinating. It’s a reminder that sometimes the path a movie takes behind the scenes is just as compelling as what ends up on screen.