Here’s a good way to look at Christopher Nolan’s growth and success as a director–in money terms, at least. The films are in order from bottom to top. Following, Memento and Prestige have very small budgets because they were independently funded films–Nolan has his own company he runs with his wife, which will be elaborated upon later.
Nolan’s involvement with Batman has its own story for another time. For now we will just focus on the monetary aspect of it. Batman Begins was Nolan’s first foray with Warner Bros., who was rebooting a franchise that had just ended a scant five years before. Its success lead to a long-in-production sequel, a movie critics around the world agree is one of the best sequels ever made: The Dark Knight. Partly fueled by Heath Ledger’s incredible acting and untimely death, the film smashed a record, earning over $1 billion worldwide. To this day, The Dark Knight is still No. 8 on the All time Worldwide Box Office Grosses.
After Nolan’s success with The Dark Knight, Warner Bros. allowed him virtually unlimited creative freedom to produce a film that he had been working on for some ten years: Inception, which carried off the top of Nolan’s previous success. I argue it ought to stand alone, though, because that film was entirely Nolan’s brainchild, entirely original, entirely new. Not to mention it stayed No. 1 in the box office for over two months.
Now. The Dark Knight Rises had actually had a script going very early on, but Heath Ledger’s death threw a wrench in it. Rather than attempt to recast his iconic character, Nolan and his team scrapped the script and started from scratch, which was part of the reason for the four-year gap between films.
Nevertheless, The Dark Knight Rises also flourished, leaving Nolan with his most astounding accomplishment yet: not one, but TWO films that made over $1 billion worldwide.
To put that in perspective, only one other director in the world has accomplished this–James Cameron, with Titanic (No.1 worldwide) and Avatar (No. 2).
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