On Wednesday, December 18, at Buckingham Palace, King Charles III made Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas a knight and a dame for their services to film. The director-producer duo have said that the King told them he liked Oppenheimer.
Buckingham Palace posted photos of the ceremony and congratulated the couple writing: “Arise, Sir Christopher Nolan and Dame Emma Thomas!” It acknowledged their “extraordinary contribution to Film.”
According to Nolan, meeting the King was a “really wonderful” experience and it was “very special” to be honored together with his wife, Thomas. The dame said that it was “even more meaningful” to receive the honors together with her husband.
Thomas is the producer behind all 12 of his films including Following, Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk. The pair, who now have four kids, met during their studies at University College London and got married in 1997.
Thomas said she had “never even dreamed of anything like this happening” and that receiving the damehood at the palace was simply “mind blowing.”
Nolan was previously nominated for six Academy Awards but won his first best director Oscar in 2024 for the 2023 film Oppenheimer. This recent venture, along with the The Dark Knight Trilogy are their highest grossing movies.
When speaking about the King to the PA news agency, Nolan said, “It was very nice that he knew our work and was aware of it, and, yes, he was hoping that I would take this as encouragement to do more of it.” The 53-year-old added, “He’d seen Oppenheimer, and he liked it, so that was very gratifying to hear.”
Oppenheimer was a hit at several award ceremonies in 2024. It’s the biopic of the father of the atomic bomb, J Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist. He was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory where the first atom bomb was developed.
Speaking of the film, Thomas said, “What I was really thrilled by is the fact that I’ve heard anecdotally since about lots of younger people having their first experience of this story on the big screen, and then delving deeper and doing more of their own research into the events that we portrayed.”
For aspiring filmmakers, Nolan’s advice was to “Find a good partner.” He stressed the importance of good partnership stating how brilliantly his partnership with Smith worked out. He went on to talk more about being excited to find a new generation of audience and being able to show them the power of a story.
In a world where wars are becoming more popular, TWH thinks the same. An impactful story on a big screen can turn unaware minds into socially and politically aware thinkers. Films like Oppenheimer and Dunkirk are necessary to show the atrocities and casualties wars cause.
