Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Motion picture |
Founded | February 27, 2001 |
Founders | Emma Thomas Christopher Nolan |
Headquarters | |
Owners | Emma Thomas Christopher Nolan |
Number of employees | 4 (2018) |
Syncopy Inc. [1] is a British-American film production company founded and operated by Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan. The name of the company is a play on syncopation and was suggested to Nolan by his late father, who was a classical music fan. [2] It has offices in London [3] and Los Angeles. [4]
The on-screen logo contains a maze with the company name.
Founded on 27 February 2001, [5] the majority of Syncopy's productions have been distributed by Warner Bros. [6] They partnered with Legendary Pictures to produce Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). In 2013, Syncopy released Zack Snyder's Man of Steel , and in 2015, they formed a joint venture with Zeitgeist Films to release Blu-ray editions of Zeitgeist's prestige films. The first title in their partnership was Elena (2011), from director Andrey Zvyagintsev. [7] Later on the production company has produced the science fiction film Interstellar (2014), the documentary short Quay (2015), the war film Dunkirk (2017), and the spy film Tenet (2020), all directed by Christopher Nolan. [8]
Other than Nolan and Thomas, the company employs only two people. In a 2018 interview for Vanity Fair , Thomas said, "We're not empire builders, we're about the individual film." [9] [10] In October 2021, it was announced that Nolan's next film, titled Oppenheimer , would be shot in IMAX and 65mm film. It was released on 21 July 2023. The film stars Cillian Murphy in the title role, with Hoyte van Hoytema, Jennifer Lame, and Ludwig Göransson all returning in their respective technical roles. [11] This is Nolan's first film distributed by Universal Pictures [12] and his first Best Picture and Best Director Oscar win at the 96th Academy Awards. [13]
Year | Title | Director | Co-production company | Distributor | Box office | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2005 | Batman Begins | Christopher Nolan | Legendary Pictures, DC Entertainment | Warner Bros. Pictures | $375 million | [14] |
2006 | The Prestige | Touchstone Pictures, Newmarket Films | Warner Bros. Pictures, Buena Vista Pictures | $109 million | [15] | |
2008 | The Dark Knight | Legendary Pictures, DC Entertainment | Warner Bros. Pictures | $1 billion | [16] | |
2010 | Inception | Legendary Pictures | $839 million | [17] | ||
2012 | The Dark Knight Rises | Legendary Pictures, DC Entertainment | $1.11 billion | [18] | ||
2013 | Man of Steel | Zack Snyder | Legendary Pictures, DC Entertainment, Peters Entertainment | $670 million | [19] | |
2014 | Interstellar | Christopher Nolan | Legendary Pictures, Lynda Obst Productions | Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount Pictures | $733 million | [20] |
2017 | Dunkirk | RatPac-Dune Entertainment | Warner Bros. Pictures | $530 million | [21] | |
2020 | Tenet | — | $365 million | [22] | ||
2023 | Oppenheimer | Atlas Entertainment | Universal Pictures | $975 million | [23] | |
Box office total: | $6.7 billion | — |
Sir Christopher Edward Nolan is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, he is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. Nolan's films have earned over $6,6 billion worldwide, making him the seventh-highest-grossing film director of all time. His accolades include two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and two British Academy Film Awards. Nolan was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2019, and received a knighthood in 2024 for his contributions to film.
Batman Begins is a 2005 superhero film directed by Sir Christopher Nolan and written by Nolan and David S. Goyer. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, it stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman, with Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe, and Morgan Freeman in supporting roles. The film reboots the Batman film series, telling the origin story of Bruce Wayne from the death of his parents to his journey to become Batman and his fight to stop Ra's al Ghul (Neeson) and the Scarecrow (Murphy) from plunging Gotham City into chaos.
Cillian Murphy is an Irish actor. His works encompass both stage and screen, and his accolades include an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Jonathan Nolan is a British and American screenwriter and producer. He is the creator of the CBS science fiction series Person of Interest (2011–2016) and co-creator of the HBO science fiction/Western series Westworld (2016–2022).
Dame Emma Thomas, Lady Nolan, is a British film producer. She has produced all of the feature films directed by her husband Sir Christopher Nolan, which have grossed more than $6 billion worldwide and are regarded as some of the greatest films of their respective decades.
Interstellar is a 2014 epic science fiction drama film directed by Christopher Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan Nolan. It stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Matt Damon, and Michael Caine. Set in a dystopian future where Earth is suffering from catastrophic blight and famine, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn in search of a new home for mankind.
Michael Caine is an English actor who has appeared in over 130 films and has had multiple television appearances. Caine's acting career began in the 1950s, when he was cast in many small, often uncredited roles in British films. Caine gained recognition as one of the most famous actors of the 1960s through his breakthrough role in the film Zulu (1964). He then portrayed spy Harry Palmer in the films The Ipcress File (1965), Funeral in Berlin (1966) and Billion Dollar Brain (1967). He also had starring roles in The Italian Job and Battle of Britain.
Following is a 1998 British independent neo-noir crime thriller film written, produced, directed, photographed, and edited by Christopher Nolan in his feature film directorial debut. It tells the story of a young man who follows strangers around the streets of London and is drawn into a criminal underworld when he fails to keep his distance.
Inception is a 2010 science fiction action heist film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced it with Emma Thomas, his wife. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets. He is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious. The ensemble cast includes Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Elliot Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Dileep Rao, and Michael Caine.
The Dark Knight Rises is a 2012 superhero film directed by Christopher Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan Nolan, and the story with David S. Goyer. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, it is the final installment in Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy, and the sequel to The Dark Knight (2008). The film stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman, alongside Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Morgan Freeman, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Michael Caine. The film, set eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, follows a retired Wayne being forced to resume his role as Batman to save Gotham City from nuclear destruction at the hands of the terrorist Bane (Hardy).
Richard King is an American film sound designer and editor who has worked on over 70 films. A native of Tampa, Florida, he graduated from the University of South Florida with a BFA in painting and film. He has won Academy Awards for Best Sound Editing for the films Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), and Dunkirk (2017). He was also nominated for War of the Worlds (2005), Interstellar (2014), Oppenheimer (2023) and Maestro (2023). He has won Bafta awards for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Inception (2010), and Dunkirk (2017) and eight MPSE awards for Best Sound Editing & Design, as well as the MPSE Career Achievement Award (2016).
John Papsidera is a casting director based in Los Angeles, California, known for his work across film and television, especially his work with some of the industry’s most successful directors, including Christopher Nolan, Ruben Fleischer, Jason Reitman, Roland Emmerich, and James Gunn. He has received sixteen Artios Awards nominations and has won four times. He has also been nominated for seven Primetime Emmy awards and has won twice.
Nathan Crowley is an English production designer and a former art director, who is best known for his collaborations with Christopher Nolan. He has been nominated six times for an Academy Award for Best Production Design for The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), First Man (2018), and Tenet (2020).
Andrew Lockley is a British visual effects supervisor most known for working on most of Christopher Nolan's films.
Dunkirk is a 2017 epic historical war thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Christopher Nolan that depicts the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II from the perspectives of the land, sea, and air. It features an ensemble cast including Fionn Whitehead, Tom Glynn-Carney, Jack Lowden, Harry Styles in his feature film debut, Aneurin Barnard, James D'Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance, and Tom Hardy.
Christopher Nolan is a British-American film director, screenwriter, and film producer. His feature directorial debut was the neo-noir crime thriller Following (1998) which was made on a budget of $6,000. Two years later, he directed the psychological thriller Memento (2000) which starred Guy Pearce as a man suffering from anterograde amnesia searching for his wife's killer. Similar to his debut feature it had a non-linear narrative structure, and was his breakthrough film. It was acclaimed by critics and was a surprise commercial success. For the film Nolan received his first nomination for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Feature Film, and for writing its screenplay he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He next directed the mystery thriller remake Insomnia (2002) which starred Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank. It was his first film for Warner Bros., and was a critical and commercial success.
Tenet is a 2020 science fiction action thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who also produced it with his wife Emma Thomas. It stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The film follows a former CIA agent who is recruited into a secret organization, tasked with tracing the origin of objects that are traveling backward through time and their connection to an attack from the future to the present.
Christopher Nolan is a British-American filmmaker known for using aesthetics, themes and cinematic techniques that are recognisable in his work. Regarded as an auteur filmmaker, Nolan is partial to elliptical editing, documentary-style lighting, hand-held camera work, natural settings, and real filming locations over studio work. Embedded narratives and crosscutting between different time frames is a major component of his work, and his films often feature experimental soundscapes and mathematically-inspired images and concepts. Nolan prefers shooting on film to digital video and advocates for the use of higher-quality, larger-format film stock. He favours practical effects over computer-generated imagery, and is a proponent of theatrical exhibition.
Oppenheimer is a 2023 epic biographical drama film written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. It follows the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who helped develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II. Based on the 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, the film dramatizes Oppenheimer's studies, his direction of the Los Alamos Laboratory and his 1954 security hearing. Cillian Murphy stars as Oppenheimer, alongside Robert Downey Jr. as the United States Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss. The ensemble supporting cast includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek, and Kenneth Branagh.
Barbenheimer was a cultural phenomenon which preceded and surrounded the simultaneous theatrical release of two films, Warner Bros. Pictures's Barbie and Universal Pictures's Oppenheimer, on July 21, 2023. The stark contrast between Barbie—a fantasy comedy by Greta Gerwig about the fashion doll Barbie—and Oppenheimer—an epic biographical thriller by Christopher Nolan about theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, a scientific director in the Manhattan Project—prompted a comedic response from Internet users, including memes, merchandise and memorabilia. Polygon described the two films as "extreme opposites", and Variety called the phenomenon "the movie event of the year".