INTERSTELLAR Screenwriter On Transitioning From Steven Spielberg To Christopher Nolan

Interstellar started ou its film life as a script written by Jonathan Nolan back in 2007 for Paramount Pictures.  Five years later, and with Steven Spielberg moving his production company (Dreamworks) from Paramount to Walt Disney Pictures, Interstellar needed a new director.   Enter Christopher Nolan.  Warner Bros. also entered the scene, cutting a deal with Paramount and Legendary Pictures to co-finance the film (Legendary agreed to finance 25% of Interstellar and in exchange WB would finance 100% of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice).  Reportedly, the draft that Jonathan Nolan wrote was much more science-based and required him to study at the California Institute of Technology for some of the more advanced, theoretical aspects of the script.  When Christopher Nolan boarded the project, he kept the first hour of the original screenplay but rewrote the latter half of the film, making the film less technical and more human.  

On moving from Spielberg to his older brother, Jonathan Nolan told Spinoff Online---

"Oh, yeah. It’s a pleasure working with Steven. He’s a legendary filmmaker, and a lovely, brilliant guy. It was great fun working with him for several years developing the project, and the spirit of the project is largely the same. What’s great about working with my brother is that he came armed to this with some of his own ideas that kind of mind-bending aspect of what might be out there beyond the infinite. So I think the spirit of the film is very similar, but Chris brings his own unique take on it. And my brother’s commitment in making these films is always to make them on the largest possible scale, to make it real. There’s a lot of versions of this film that might have been kind of an animated movie. But I’m drawn to working with filmmakers like Steven and like Chris who are committed to the odd fashioned art of movie making: go out and make it for real."