20 Things You Didn't Know About Interstellar

2. The Story Was Inspired By... Avatar And Wall-E?!

Wall-E Pixar
Disney

During that early version of the project involving Steven Spielberg and Jonathan Nolan, the younger Nolan brother struggled with the idea of making a realistic space movie. He even went so far as to say that "my take on a realistic space-exploration film was simple: It’s not going to happen."

Obviously though, he eventually cracked the story, and some of the movies he drew inspiration from might come as a surprise.

Around the same time that Jonathan was writing Interstellar, Hollywood was releasing apocalyptic sci-fi flicks like Avatar and Wall-E, and it was this trend that inspired him to set the film in a blight-ridden dystopia.

At the same time, he also wanted Interstellar to be a tale of hope, which - despite the bleak circumstances the characters find themselves in - is another element that all three movies share.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!