He’s twisted time. He’s reinvented Batman. He’s conquered the box office multiple times over. And he’s always done it entirely his own way. There’s nobody out there like Christopher Nolan – a game-changing filmmaker who makes masterpieces like nobody’s business, deploying cerebral cinematic craft to create big-impact blockbusters. Over the last 25 years, he’s proven himself as one of the all-time greats – and so, in the wake of his landmark Oscar wins for Oppenheimer, Empire presents the ultimate tribute: a one-off collector’s edition dedicated to a director like no other.
In this limited-edition magazine, we take a deep-dive trip through Nolan’s entire filmography, presenting not only the finest archive material from the Empire vault – collected as we’ve followed the man’s career through the years – but brand-new articles. That includes a major conversation with Nolan himself – plus his producing partner and wife Emma Thomas – conducted this April, looking back on the masterworks they’ve made together, and an exclusive tribute written by Denis Villeneuve.
Inside, you’ll read star Guy Pearce and cinematographer Wally Pfister on the making of Memento; dispatches from the set of Batman Begins with Nolan and Christian Bale; Hugh Jackman writing about the magical mysteries of The Prestige; our The Dark Knight set report, including Heath Ledger talking about his Joker performance; an up-close account of Inception’s most explosive set-piece as it was filmed; the making of The Dark Knight Rises as all involved bid farewell to Batman; a trip into outer space on the epic sets and locations of Interstellar; the cast and crew of Dunkirk on their time making the ticking-clock war thriller; a breakdown of Tenet’s most brain-teasing moments; and Nolan speaking to us both before and after the release of Oppenheimer.
And that’s just scratching the surface. From an illustrated breakdown of every Inception dream-layer to answers to the biggest questions of Interstellar, via pieces written by the likes of Robin Williams and Gary Oldman, it’s an unmissable exploration of every single Christopher Nolan movie. To pore over it all in its entirety, you might just need to pull off a temporal pincer movement.
Pick up this very special collector’s edition of Empire when it hits newsstands on Thursday 23 May. And if you’re an Empire subscriber, we have good news – you’ll get early access to purchase the issue with an exclusive pre-order link, arriving in your inbox. Set your Edith Piaf alarm now so you regrette rien.