Steven Spielberg has discussed his time working on Interstellar, which he ended up walking away from before Christopher Nolan took over.
Interstellar, which came out in 2014, stars Matthew McConaughey as a pilot who travels through space in a desperate attempt to find a new home for humanity amid catastrophic blight on Earth. It was praised for its visuals and realistic representations of the effects of gravity and space travel, as well as its soundtrack. However, some criticized the movie for its ending, which leant on sentimentality.
Spielberg, currently doing the rounds promoting his upcoming sci-film Disclosure Day, told Empire (via GamesRadar), that he worked on Interstellar for a year, but despite Christopher Nolan’s brother, Jonathan, writing multiple drafts of the script, “it didn’t stick.”
As Spielberg recalled, Jonathan Nolan recommended Christopher Nolan take on Interstellar, should he walk away from it. And so it proved.
“I was involved with Interstellar for a year,” Spielberg said. “Kip Thorne brought me the project with Lynda Obst, the producer, and I became fascinated with it. I spent a lot of time at the [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] in Pasadena, California, talking to the scientists there and the aerospace engineers.”
“I actually hired Chris Nolan’s brother Jonah to write the first and second draft for me, but it didn’t stick,” Spielberg continued. “Jonah actually said, ‘If there comes a point where you decide not to make this movie, I can tell you who’s gonna grab it. He’s already bugging me about it. And that’s my brother Chris.'”
Spielberg sounded happy with how Interstellar went down, and how the film ended up. “He was absolutely right,” he said of Jonathan’s recommendation. “The second I decided not to make it, Chris jumped on board, probably the next day. Interstellar was a much better movie in Chris Nolan’s hands than it would have been in mine.”
Nolan has spoken openly about the making of Interstellar in the past, and what he was shooting for in terms of tone. As reported by Variety, speaking at a screening of the film in Imax 70mm at the AMC Universal Citywalk in Los Angeles in February, Nolan said: “I had a lot of conversations with Jonathan over the years and what he was doing and what his ambition was. I was excited by it. I was incredibly struck by his first act. I had been working on a time travel idea… things looking at time. I had half-baked projects that I hadn’t committed to. When it became available, it was a case of me saying to Jonathan, ‘How would you feel if I took this and tried to combine it with some of my ideas and change a bit with what it was?’ He was fine with it. He could tell the spirit of what I was trying to do was to get to what he was initially excited about it.”
“I had some producer anonymously say of me, ‘He is a cold guy who makes cold films.’ Then it sort of stuck on me for several projects,” Nolan continued. “The reason I was attracted to my brother’s first act is because it’s about family and humanity, and it’s deeply emotional. That’s the film I wanted to make. It’s a film that wears its heart on its sleeve.”
In October, Matthew McConaughey revealed that Interstellar’s iconic tape scene was not heavily rehearsed, nor did he have to go through multiple takes to get the emotional reaction we see on-screen. McConaughey in fact nailed it on the first take, and he didn’t rehearse the scene at all.
Disclosure Day, meanwhile, hits theaters June 12, 2026.
Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
