What you need to know:
There are a lot of great movies that never get made. One of them was the Howard Hughes biography written and directed by Christopher Nolan.
Over the years, some of the greatest filmmakers have worked on projects that failed to come to fruition. One of the most popular, for example, is the epic of Napoleon that Stanley Kubrick prepared after the success of 2001. But it never happened. Another great example is the biopic that Christopher Nolan wanted to do about Howard Hughes with… Jim Carrey?
As they read it. A few years ago, long before working on the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer (HERE we leave our review), Nolan planned a movie centering on the life of the legendary Howard Hughes, who became the first billionaire in history, as well as being one of the most successful producers in Hollywood and a great aviator.
If the name sounds beyond his achievements, it is because Hughes is also the protagonist of the great 2004 movie The Aviator by Martin Scorsese, which has the leading role of Leonardo DiCapriorevealing, in more detail, the businessman’s personal life marked by his obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But why didn’t Christopher Nolan’s movie about Howard Hughes happen, and how did Jim Carrey come to be considered for the role? Here we tell you the story of one of the greatest movies that didn’t happen.
Howard Hughes as character
As we tell you, Howard Hughes is one of the most important figures in the history of Hollywood. His most important role within the film industry was as producer, but he also entered the direction… and several love affairs with some of the biggest stars of the time such as Rita Hayworth, Katharine Hepburn or Ava Gardner.
Therefore, it was not surprising that while he was alive, he became a recurring character in various productions for film and television. Over the years, actors like Tommy Lee Jones, Jason Robarts, Dean Stockwell or Terry O’Quinn they interpreted it under the direction of filmmakers such as Jonathan Demme and Francis Ford Coppola.
However, as we mentioned above, the most outstanding and well-known production on the life of Howard Hughes is The Aviator (The Aviator) starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The film received 11 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Actor and Supporting Actress, which was won by Cate Blanchett.
Christopher Nolan’s film with Jim Carrey
following from 1998 It was Christopher Nolan’s first film, but it was in 2000 that he became one of the most famous directors (or at least to have on the radar) thanks to the film mementowhich poses an ingenious non-linear narrative.
Two years later he premiered insomiathe remake of the famous Norwegian film from 1997. For Nolan’s film, some of the most popular Hollywood stars such as Al Pacino and Robin Williams met, and it received good reviews from the specialized press.
That opened the way for him to carry out, almost immediately, his next project: a biography of Howard Hughes. Nolan wrote the script, and in the words of the same director, it is one of the best in his career. The British took the book as a reference Citizen Hughes: The Power, the Money and the Madness by Michael Drosnin published in 1985, nine years after the death of Howard Hughes.
The most interesting thing is that at the time of writing it, I already knew who would be its protagonist. The answer is Jim Carrey, who impressed Nolan with his work on man on the moon, Miloš Forman’s film centered on the life of Andy Kaufman.
In various interviews, Nolan has told about the approaches he had with the comedian and concluded that Carrey was perfect for the role. “He was born to play it. It really is perfect”.
Why was the movie never made?
Christopher Nolan’s film, based on the book, would present the last years of the life of Howard Hugheswhich were marked by his obsessive compulsive disorder, his phobia of germs, addiction to various drugs and the countless times that the businessman secluded himself in hotels to escape the public eye.
Howard Hughes seemed (and still is) a perfect character for Nolan, who has always explored complex figures that face an antisesis which, in most cases, is revealed as an internal struggle, a mental and emotional conflict.
But the movie was never made. The reason? It was just that another biopic about Hughes was already in development. Scorsese’s with DiCaprio? That same one, but before, that project It belonged to Michael Mann, who came from directing the biopic of Ali with Will Smith.
The project was already well advanced, but everything changed when Mann decided to leave the production (after the failure in critics of Aliironically) and Martin Scorsese came to take command of the tape. That was how Nolan decided to step aside and move on with another project: Batman Begins.
It would have been sensational to see the biography of Howard Hughes under the direction of Christopher Nolan and with the lead of Jim Carrey. Actually. But if we think about it, somehow the fact that it didn’t happen, was what allowed Nolan to get involved with the trilogy Batmanone of the coolest and most defining superhero franchises in all of history.
