Some stories only get told when the right project comes along. Steven Spielberg is currently doing press for his upcoming sci-fi thriller Disclosure Day (June 12), and in a new interview with Empire, he has finally opened up about one of Hollywood’s most fascinating untold origin stories â the real reason Interstellar was never his film to make.
Most fans know Interstellar as a Christopher Nolan masterpiece. What very few know is how close it came to being something else entirely. Spielberg was there first. And what took it away from him had nothing to do with creative differences.
How a Studio Divorce Changed Interstellar Forever
GettyThe project came to Spielberg in 2006 through a remarkable team: Nobel Prize-winning physicist Kip Thorne and producer Lynda Obst, two longtime friends who had known each other since Carl Sagan set them up on a blind date. Their shared vision was a film grounded in real science. Spielberg was immediately drawn in. He made multiple trips to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, meeting directly with scientists and aerospace engineers to understand the physics. He then hired Jonathan Nolan â Christopher’s brother â to write the first and second drafts.
Then came the business split no one talks about. When Spielberg moved his production company DreamWorks from Paramount Pictures to Disney in 2009, the story remained with Paramount â making his continued involvement impossible. He was not choosing to walk away. He was locked out. Jonathan Nolan, already aware that his brother had been circling the project, gave Spielberg a quiet heads-up: the moment you step aside, Chris is taking this. Spielberg confirmed to Empire that the warning proved completely accurate. “The second I decided not to make it, Chris jumped on board, probably the next day,” he said. His verdict on what followed was just as direct â Interstellar was a much better film in Nolan’s hands than it would have been in his.
The Version That Never Was â And Why That Matters
GettySpielberg’s Interstellar would have been a genuinely different film. The 2008 Jonathan Nolan draft, written under Spielberg, included a space race angle where Chinese astronauts had already reached the target planet and died there before the American crew arrived. It also featured a romantic relationship between Cooper and Dr. Brand â a thread Christopher Nolan deliberately cut, replacing it with the iconic, non-romantic dynamic that fans now consider one of the film’s boldest creative choices. Perhaps the most striking change of all: Murph was originally written as a boy. It was Nolan who made Cooper’s child a daughter â a shift that completely transformed the emotional heart of the story. Interestingly, this same pattern of a director being redirected by circumstance to something far greater also shaped Nolan’s own career, as he was once set to direct Troy before finding his way to Batman Begins instead.
Interstellar opened in November 2014, grossed $681 million worldwide in its initial run, earned five Oscar nominations, and won for Best Visual Effects. It has since grown into one of the most beloved science fiction films of the century.
Spielberg is now channeling that same passion for space and the unknown into Disclosure Day, starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth, hitting theaters on June 12.
Two legends. One film. A studio deal that changed everything. The fact that Spielberg can look back on all of it with nothing but gratitude says everything about both directors.
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