Could Christopher Nolan's next project be a horror movie?

Christopher Nolan is keen to direct a straight-up horror movie in the future.

To date, the acclaimed filmmaker has directed 12 movies - Following, Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet and Oppenheimer.

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There are certainly horror elements in some of those movies, Insomnia and Memento in particular are murder mystery thrillers, but Nolan has never helmed what could be described as a 'classic' horror picture.

That is something he is apparently looking to change.

"I think horror films are very interesting because they depend on very cinematic devices," he told the British Film Institute.

"It’s really about (provoking) a visceral response to things. So at some point, I’d love to make a horror film. But I think a really good horror film requires a really exceptional idea — and those are few and far between.

"So I haven’t found the story that lends itself to that. But I think it’s a very interesting genre from a cinematic point of view. It’s also one of the few genres where — the studios make a lot of these films — and they’re films that have a lot of bleakness, a lot of abstraction. They have a lot qualities that Hollywood is generally very resistant to putting into films, but that’s a genre where it’s allowable."

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There is horror in Oppenheimer

Nolan's latest picture Oppenheimer absolutely has elements of horror, too, which is understandable when dealing with the subject matter of an atomic bomb.

The sequence involving the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is particularly jarring.

"Certainly Oppenheimer has elements of horror — which I definitely think is appropriate for the subject matter," Nolan continued.

"The middle of the film is very heavily based on the heist genre, and the third act of the film is the courtroom drama. And the reason I settled on those two genres for those sections is they are mainstream genres in which dialogue and people talking is inherently tense and interesting to an audience. That’s the fun thing with genre — you get to play with a lot of different areas whereas in different type of film you really wouldn’t be allowed to."