Christopher Nolan plans to make his next project on J Robert Oppenheimer with Universal instead of Warner Bros

After a public outcome over release method with Warner Bros., Christopher Nolan’s next movie, about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the advancement of the atom bomb, will be published by Universal Pictures.

Representatives for the studio verified on Tuesday that Universal has obtained the rights to finance and administer Nolan’s not-yet-titled movie. Deadline Hollywood first reported the agreement.

Nolan also inscribed the movie’s script about the theoretical physicist. Production is predicted to start early next year.

With only a few anomalies, Warner Bros. had long been home to Nolan going back to 2002′s Insomnia. With the studio, he created The Dark Knight trilogy, the best-picture nominee Dunkirk, the 2010 mind-bender Inception and 2020′s time-traveling Tenet.

Last year, Warner Bros. released Tenet in theatres in September at a time when much of the movie industry was scared about releasing big-budget movies. The sci-fi thriller eventually grossed $363.7 million, making it easily the biggest Hollywood pandemic release of the year.

But when Warner Bros. in December announced plans to release all of its 2021 films simultaneously on HBO Max, Nolan — long an ardent advocate for the theatrical experience — was one of the studio’s harshest critics. In a statement, he said, “some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service.”

“Warner Bros. had an incredible machine for getting a filmmaker’s work out everywhere, both in theatres and in the home, and they are dismantling it as we speak,” wrote Nolan. “They don’t even understand what they’re losing. Their decision makes no economic sense, and even the most casual Wall Street investor can see the difference between disruption and dysfunction.”

Shortly thereafter, he called the studio’s plans “a mess” in an interview with The Associated Press.

“It’s a unilateral decision that the studio took. They didn’t even tell the people involved,” Nolan said. “You have these great filmmakers who worked with passion and diligence for years on projects that are intended to be feature films with fantastic movie stars. And they’ve all now been told that they’re a loss-leader for a fledgling streaming service.”

Executives for Warner Bros. have maintained that the studio will return to releasing movies exclusively in theatres next year.