Christopher Nolan, the famed director of "The Dark Knight" trilogy and "Inception," revealed what influenced him for his latest project, the sci-fi film "Interstellar," IGN reported.
According to the director, he took his inspiration from the masterpieces of Stephen Spielberg, particularly the 1975 film "Jaws" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" from 1977.
"I do liken ['Interstellar'] to the blockbusters I grew up with as a kid," Nolan said. "A lot of them by Spielberg. I don't like talking about Spielberg too much because he was the director on the project before me and I don't want to keep coming back to that."
"But the truth is, there's a great spirit to films like 'Close Encounters' and 'Jaws' that I really wanted to try and capture, because I haven't seen it in a very long time." He continued.
As to the "spirit" that Nolan was talking about, it has something to do with Spielberg's projects being great family films. Although "Jaws" may have scared kids from visiting beaches, the movie and "Close Encounters" were made as edgy blockbuster films meant for the entire family, according to Indie Wire.
"When you're making a family film, it has all these pejorative connotations that it'll be somewhat soft," he said. "But when I was a kid, these were family films in the best sense, and they were as edgy and incisive and challenging as anything else on the blockbuster spectrum."
"I wanted to bring that back in some way," he added.
Aside from Spielberg's works, Nolan also cited Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Philip Kauffman's "The Right Stuff" as inspiration for "Interstellar," Collider reported.
"You can't pretend '2001' doesn't exist when you're making 'Interstellar,'" he said. "But the other film I'd have to point to is 'The Right Stuff.' I screened a print of it for the crew before we started, because that's a film that not enough people have seen on the big screen."
"It's an almost perfectly made film," Nolan continued. "It's one of the great American movies and people don't quite realize how great it is - probably because it's four hours long!"
"Interstellar" will premiere on Nov. 5 of this year and stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine and Jessica Chastain.