After finishing up on Insomnia, the next project Christopher Nolan was working on was a biopic of the famous Hollywood mogul/plane magnate/nutjob Howard Hughes, set to star Jim Carrey as the man himself. The screenplay was done, with Nolan describing it as "one of the best things I've ever written", and then he realised Martin Scorsese was making The Aviator (starring, ironically, future Nolan collaborator Leonardo di Caprio). He did Batman instead, so it's not like he strayed far from the billionaire maniac theme...
7. And A Ruth Rendell Adaptation
The other film Nolan was eyeing up after completing Insomnia - and before jumping ship to go helm Batman Begins instead = was an adaptation of crime novel The Keys To The Street, by prolific English author Ruth Rendell. He finished the screenplay for Fox Searchlight, about a woman who starts an affair with the leukaemia patient she donated bone marrow to whilst a serial killer plagues the local area, but it remains unproduced.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
