When it comes to tackling time travel on the big screen, it’s safe to say Jonathan Nolan is something of an expert. The “Dark Knight” screenwriter spent years researching the practices of time travel for his 2014 film “Interstellar” (directed by his brother Christopher Nolan), to the point where he became somewhat of an expert on the subject through the development of during the project.
That’s why, when he read William Gibson’s 2014 book The Peripheral, Nolan was both excited and upset.
The story, now a Prime Video series produced by Nolan, is about a young woman living in near-future America named Flynne Fisher (Chloe Grace Moretz) who, when connected to a device AR who looks like a video game, is able to transfer her mind data to a distant post-apocalyptic future and pilots a host robot body.
“It was bitter, because I spent a lot of time [‘Interstellar’] Thinking about time travel, we always wanted to do a time travel project,” Nolan told TheWrap. “And so I spent years, frankly, thinking about multiple worlds and feedback loops and wormholes and all the different mechanisms by which time travel could work, because in part—I mean, Back to the Future ” is one of my favorite movies. I think it’s one of the few perfect movies, but time travel movies are inherently problematic. Because at some level, and this may be true of all quantum mechanics, your mind rejects the idea. It feels inherently problematic.”
When Nolan read The Peripheral, he realized that Gibson overcame the problem.
“Having spent years and giving my best effort to the film, reading Gibson’s book was a naturally bittersweet undertaking, because as usual, this is where Bill turns his vast imagination to the subject, and frankly, nails it. Hole in one,” he said.
“How do you combine multiple worlds theories with a plausible theory of time travel? Well, just combine them. You just say that whenever you travel — and I was always interested in the idea that you could travel with information, and yes, on one level the issue is information, but it’s not, is it? It’s a big difference between Michael J. Fox and an email, isn’t it? So this idea that you can travel with information, but also critically that every time you do that, you give birth to a fresh universe, a stub. It’s both believable and heartbreaking, which are the two ingredients of drama that are kind of essential. So the second we read it and realized what it was suggesting, yes, it was both very irritating and also very exciting as a possibility for a series.”
The idea to turn The Peripheral into a show actually originated with director Vincenzo Natali, who serves as executive producer and director of half of the first season’s episodes. Having worked with Nolan and Lisa Joy on “Westworld,” he suggested they team up on a “Peripheral” adaptation.
It was an easy yes — Nolan says he became a Gibson fan when he read Count Zero at age 14 — and Natali says Nolan and Joy were the ideal collaborators.
“I think the remarkable thing about it, certainly from my perspective, was the good fortune of getting Jonah and Lisa involved,” he told TheWrap. “If you read the book, it’s deliberately difficult – it’s like being whisked away to a foreign country without a guide or without speaking the language, and you as a reader have to find your way through that world. It’s intentionally difficult as a reader, and I think only people like Jonah and Lisa who truly understand and appreciate it and the genre can see beyond that and see that this is a story that translates into an exciting narrative, visual, and dramatic experience that it’s all too human.”
Natali credits Nolan and Joy for suggesting they focus the first season on Flynne’s character, while the book doubles the narrative between Flynne and Wilf (Gary Carr). He also singles out series creator and writer Scott B. Smith’s “beautiful scripts” for embedding the humanity at the heart of the show.
With season 1 coming to a close, is there hope for a second season? While Amazon has yet to officially renew the series, conceptual work had begun on what Season 2 might look like when we spoke with Nolan and Natali.
“On the conceptual stage Scott and the writers are working away [on Season 2],” Nolan revealed. “We’re excited to see what audiences make of it and excited if there’s an opportunity to do a second season.”
New episodes of “The Peripheral” air on Fridays on Prime Video.
