Jonathan Nolan saw this coming. As a screenwriter, he’s worked on several of his brother Christopher Nolan’s films, from Interstellar to the Dark Knight movies. Partnered with his wife Lisa Joy, he created HBO’s Westworld and executive produced Amazon Prime’s Fallout. But before that, he cut his TV teeth creating Person of Interest, a CBS procedural about a solitary tech billionaire who creates a piece of surveillance software aimed at stopping crime before it happens. It was fiction, but it’s hard not to feel its prescience.
With Fallout, now in its second season, Nolan also has his sights on the future. Based on the video game series of the same name, it’s about a postapocalyptic America where everyone must survive in any way they can. It’s also wickedly funny and full of 1950s-era retrofuturism.
So, what does Nolan see happening in the coming decades? A lot. For one, he doesn’t think AI is going to replace human filmmakers. In fact, he thinks it could help aspiring directors get a foot in the door. (Though, he says, he will never use it in his own writing.) He’d also like to see the demise of (most) social media—but understands that may never happen.
For this week’s episode of The Big Interview podcast, I asked Nolan about all of those things and more. Below you’ll find his thoughts on writing Batman movies, classic cars, and what he’d actually bring to his own doomsday bunker.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KATIE DRUMMOND: Jonathan Nolan, welcome to The Big Interview.
JONATHAN NOLAN: Thank you for having me.
I’m delighted to have you here in person in New York. It’s very cold. I’m from Canada so my barometer is a little off, but …
I’m from Chicago. I tend to think of New York as wimpy cold.
No, no, this is real. The older I get the weaker and more frail. So I can’t tolerate [it].
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