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How Christopher Nolan’s Inception Became One Of The Biggest Original Box Office Hits Ever





(Welcome to Tales from the Box Office, our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them.)

“I’ve been fascinated by dreams my whole life, since I was a kid, and I think the relationship between movies and dreams is something that’s always interested me, and I liked the idea of trying to portray dreams on film.” Those are the words of Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan explaining in 2010 where the idea for “Inception” came from.

Conceptually, it sounds just as likely to be a $15 million A24 movie than what we got, which was a mind-bending, massively expensive, inventive blockbuster that was, in addition to being a massive hit, a wholly original idea. 15 years later, it’s hard to imagine almost any original movie getting a $160 million green light from a studio like Warner Bros. Yet, Nolan was at the beginning of one of the most incredible hot streaks Hollywood has ever seen. “Inception” still serves as perhaps his most impressive commercial achievement within that hot streak, as it still ranks as one of the biggest original movies ever made.

In this week’s Tales from the Box Office, we’re looking back at “Inception” 15 years later. We’ll go over the movie’s origins, where Nolan was at in his career at that time, what happened when the movie hit theaters, what happened in the aftermath of its release, and what lessons we can learn from it all these years later. Let’s dig in, shall we?

The movie: Inception

“Inception” as we know it centers on Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a skilled thief who specializes in stealing things from people while they’re dreaming, making him a coveted player in the world of corporate espionage. As a fugitive on the run, hoping to reunite with his family in America, Cobb is offered a chance to do just that with one last job that could give him his life back. His task? Pull off the impossible — inception!

It’s worth looking at where Nolan was at during this point in his career. Ever since his acclaimed “Memento” hit theaters in 2001 and became a hit against its tiny budget, the filmmaker had been on the rise. That eventually led him to “Batman Begins,” which, despite not being a big hit at the box office, was met with widespread critical acclaim. WB felt confident enough to move forward with a sequel, which is when everything changed.

After helming the much-beloved mid-budget hit “The Prestige” in 2006, Nolan gave the world “The Dark Knight” in 2008, which became a $1 billion box office smash and a downright cultural phenomenon. This was at a time when very few movies had ever crossed the $1 billion mark globally. It catapulted Nolan to A-list status, and the director had essentially earned a blank check to do what he wanted next.

Warner Bros. signed on to make “Inception” in February 2009 in a seven-figure deal. Months later, reports circulated suggesting it was going to have a whopping $200 million budget — exceedingly rare for the time, particularly for an original movie.

Inception was Warner Bros. betting big on Nolan

The final budget was reported to be $160 million, split between Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures. Budgets of that size were then and are typically now reserved for big blockbusters based on established IP. Betting that big on an original idea is exceedingly rare. It speaks volumes about the respect Nolan had earned by that point. Not only were his films hits, but they were generally met with widespread acclaim and awards season glory. That’s a rare combination.

Nolan had worked on the script for “Inception” for 10 years before he finally made it. Naturally, things evolved along the way. Initially, Nolan had conceived of it as a horror movie. As the director explained in 2010:

“I was thinking along the lines of a horror movie at first, but it eventually became this project. I was looking for a device whereby the dreams would become important to the story, and the thought that someone could invade your dream space and steal an idea is immensely compelling to me. The concept that dreams feel real while we’re in them underlies the whole film.”

What it became was a star-studded, sci-fi heist movie. Nolan recruited Leonardo DiCaprio for the lead role after years of wanting to work with him. The rest of the ensemble included the likes of Ken Watanabe (“The Last Samurai”), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“500 Days of Summer”), Marion Cotillard (“Nine”), Elliot Page (“Juno”), Tom Hardy (“Bronson”), Cillian Murphy (“28 Days Later”), and frequent collaborator Michael Caine.

“You’ve just got to go for the opportunities of films you think might be memorable,” DiCaprio said to NPR at the time. People may not always remember their dreams, but they were going to remember “Inception.”

The financial journey


Warner Bros. went big on the marketing effort, leaning into the trippy visuals and wildly inventive set pieces, such as the now-infamous zero-gravity hallway fight. It wasn’t important to convey the specifics of the complex story. The guy who made “The Dark Knight” made a heist movie that takes place in dreams with some stuff that looks cool, starring the guy from “Titanic.” The general public all across the globe effectively screamed, “Sold!”

“Inception” opened in theaters on the weekend of July 16, 2010. It easily topped the charts in its debut, pulling in $62.7 million domestically. It certainly didn’t hurt that its only direct competition came in the form of Disney’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” starring Nicolas Cage, which opened to just $17.6 million. It was one of the biggest opening weekends ever for an original sci-fi movie up to that point.

James Cameron’s “Avatar” held the record with $77 million in December 2009. It went on to make more than $2.9 billion and stands as the highest-grossing movie ever made. Not bad company to be in. More importantly, Nolan’s mind-bending epic captivated moviegoers and generated great word of mouth, holding onto the top spot for three weekends. It didn’t have to surrender the crown until “The Other Guys” arrived in early August.

“Inception” held strong well into the fall, finishing its original run with $292.5 million domestically and, more importantly, an outsized $535.6 million internationally for a grand total of $828.2 million worldwide. Subsequent re-releases have pushed that total to $839.3 million.

Inception etched its way into the history books

It wound up as the fourth-biggest movie of 2010, training only “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” ($960.2 million), Tim Burton’s live-action “Alice in Wonderland” remake ($1.02 billion), and “Toy Story 3” ($1.06 billion). The only other original movie in the global top ten that year was “How to Train Your Dragon” ($494.8 million).

Rather crucially, that animated adventure got two sequels and a live-action remake. Nolan’s “Inception” remains a one-and-done, wholly original piece of work. Even “Avatar” is on the road to becoming a five-movie franchise. As far as original cinema goes? This movie truly does virtually stand alone as arguably the highest-grossing purely original motion picture ever produced. It isn’t based on anything other than Nolan’s obsession with dreams. It never got a sequel, and there are no plans for one, so far as we know.

Just to illustrate how rare this level of success is for original filmmaking, “Sinners” became the first Hollywood movie to make $200 million or more at the domestic box office this year for the first time since “Coco” ($210 million domestically/$814 million worldwide) in 2017. The last live-action movie to do it was “Gravity” ($274 million domestically/$723 million worldwide) in 2013. None of those movies made more than “Inception” in the U.S. or overseas.

“Inception” remains the 99th highest-grossing movie ever at the global box office, unadjusted for inflation. Every single movie above it is either based on something else, is a sequel in an existing franchise, or has generated a franchise. In that way, it stands alone.

Christopher Nolan becomes Hollywood’s most reliable hit-maker

It is one thing for a filmmaker (particularly in the 2000s and beyond) to make big hits based on IP. Just look at what Michael Bay did with “Transformers.” It’s another thing entirely for a guy like Nolan to parlay what he did with “The Dark Knight” to a success like “Inception,” which also garnered a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, it’s worth adding. Again, acclaim and money.

This also furthered one of the craziest box office runs by any filmmaker in history. Nolan remains the only director to ever have five movies in a row gross at least $500 million globally, with “The Dark Knight Rises” ($1.1 billion), “Interstellar” ($758.6 million), and “Dunkirk” ($533.6 million) all passing that mark. In that run, we had the finale to a trilogy, another ambitious, original sci-fi picture, and a unique account of a singular event from World War II.

What “Inception” helped cement for audiences is that Nolan’s name alone was enough to warrant the price of admission. It hardly mattered what subject he was tackling, be it a Batman or an epic love story in space. It all truly culminated when “Oppenheimer” made close to $1 billion while also winning Best Picture at the Oscars. And, all due respect, that was sold as a must-see IMAX experience despite being a biopic that focuses on characters talking intensely much of the time, with an all-timer cinematic moment in the form of the bomb test scene.

The lessons contained within

This movie’s success feels like the turning point for Nolan where he went from well-liked director to universally beloved, seemingly bulletproof A-lister. It put him in a class all his own and he remains in a class all his own.

In the here and now, Nolan feels like an indispensable asset to the survival of cinema as we know it. Universal is so confident in “The Odyssey” that it started selling IMAX tickets a full year in advance. They’re now being scalped online like concert tickets. No other living filmmaker could garner such feverish attention in the streaming era, when it’s never been easier to just stay at home. 

Even so, there’s no predicting success — particularly on this level. Warner Bros. looked smart for gambling on this movie, but rest assured, it was a gamble. In an era when $200 million blockbusters are made far too frequently on a model of presumed success, it’s worth looking at Nolan’s own words. Speaking to the New York Times in 2010, reflecting on the success of “The Dark Knight” just before “Inception” hit theaters, Nolan had this to say: 

“It could be paralyzing, if you chose to take credit for the success, rather than understanding that when you catch the zeitgeist in that way, that’s a very unique thing. And not possible to explain. Beyond that, it’s in the hands of the movie gods.”

Therein lies the lesson Hollywood should remember more frequently. Though the movie gods have had Nolan firmly in their hands ever since he spoke those wise words.




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