1993–2000: Early career and breakthrough While attending UCL, Thomas completed an unpaid
internship with
Working Title Films and worked as a runner and a receptionist. she was promoted to
production coordinator for the studio. After plans to create a full-length feature,
Larry Mahoney, were scrapped, Thomas produced her first feature,
Following (1998), with Nolan and
Jeremy Theobald, who stars as an unemployed young writer who follows strangers in London in hopes of receiving material for his first novel, but is drawn into a criminal underworld where he fails to keep his distance. The film was conceived on a
production budget of around £3,000 () and was filmed on weekends over the course of a year, with scenes being rehearsed extensively to preserve
film stock. Thomas pitched Nolan's screenplay for their breakthrough film
Memento (2000), which follows a man with
anterograde amnesia who uses photographs, notes and tattoos to hunt his wife's murderer, to
Aaron Ryder of
Newmarket Films, who lauded the script. The film was given a budget of $4.5 million () and was distributed by Newmarket to 500 theatres in the United States after it was rejected by other studios, who feared that it would not attract a wide audience. Thomas was credited as an associate producer of
Memento, which received critical acclaim and several accolades, including two nominations at the
74th Academy Awards. Six critics listed it as one of the
best films of the 2000s. She also assisted director
Stephen Frears during the production of
High Fidelity (2000).
2001–2013: Widespread recognition at
WonderCon in 2010. On 27 February 2001, Thomas and Nolan founded the production company
Syncopy Inc. She co-produced the
psychological thriller Insomnia (2002), after filmmaker
Steven Soderbergh recommended Nolan to
Warner Bros. to direct a remake of the 1997
Norwegian thriller of the same name. The film follows two Los Angeles detectives who were sent to investigate the murder of a teenager in a northern Alaskan town. It received positive reviews from critics and grossed $113 million against a budget of $43 million. Thomas produced
the Dark Knight trilogy with Nolan,
Charles Roven and
Larry Franco; which consisted of
Batman Begins (2005),
The Dark Knight (2008), and
The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Collectively, the films grossed over $2.4 billion worldwide, and is considered to be one of the greatest trilogies ever made.
The Dark Knight received eight nominations at the
81st Academy Awards, winning
Best Sound Editing for
Richard King and
Best Supporting Actor; a posthumous accolade for
Heath Ledger. The film's failure to capture a
Best Picture nomination garnered media criticism, resulting in the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences increasing their Best Picture nominees from five to ten; a decision coined by the media as "The
Dark Knight Rule". During production of the
Dark Knight trilogy, Thomas produced
The Prestige (2006), an adaptation of
the Christopher Priest novel about two rival 19th-century magicians, and
Inception (2010), an original film about a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the
subconscious of his targets. Both films were critically and commercially successful:
The Prestige earned over $109 million on a budget of $40 million, despite receiving a bleak box office prognosis, while
Inception grossed $839 million worldwide against a budget of $160 million. Thomas received several accolades for her work on the latter film, including nominations for the
Academy Award,
Golden Globe Award, and
BAFTA Award for Best Film. She and Nolan produced
Zack Snyder's
Man of Steel (2013), which received mixed reviews and grossed more than $660 million worldwide against a budget of $220 million.
2014–2019: Interstellar and Dunkirk Thomas's next feature
Interstellar (2014), which she produced with Nolan and
Lynda Obst, follows a group of astronauts who travel through a
wormhole near
Saturn in search of a new home for humankind. It received positive reviews from film critics and was praised by astronauts for its scientific accuracy and portrayal of theoretical astrophysics. Grossing over $730 million worldwide against a budget of $165 million,
Interstellar received five nominations at the
87th Academy Awards, winning
Best Visual Effects. Earlier in the year, she executive-produced
Wally Pfister's directorial debut
Transcendence. Through her production company, Thomas formed a joint venture with
Zeitgeist Films to release
Blu-ray versions of
Elena (2011) and a compilation of animated short films by the
Quay brothers. She serves on the
Motion Picture & Television Fund Board of Directors. After executive producing Zack Snyder's
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and
Justice League (2017), Thomas produced the
historical war film Dunkirk (2017), which depicts the
World War II evacuation of the same name from the perspectives of the land, sea, and air. She and her husband were first interested in creating the film after taking an "ill-fated" sailing trip across the
English Channel about twenty years prior, which "very much cemented for us what an incredible achievement that evacuation was". Among
Dunkirk's
many accolades, Thomas earned her second Oscar nomination for Best Picture. A year later, she and Nolan executive produced the Quay brothers' animated short ''
The Doll's Breath'' (2019). She was appointed to the board of trustees for the
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
2020–present: Tenet, Oppenheimer and The Odyssey Tenet (2020), Thomas's next feature, follows an unnamed protagonist who travels through time to prevent a world-threatening attack. The film was the first Hollywood
tent-pole to open in theatres during the
COVID-19 pandemic; it was
delayed three times before premiering due to the pandemic. Despite failing to
break-even,
Tenet grossed $363 million worldwide on a budget of $200 million. It was a polarising screening for film critics;
USA Today's Jenna Ryu and the
Los Angeles Times' Christi Carras both described the overall tone of the reviews as "mixed" and "all over the place". The film won
Best Visual Effects and was nominated for
Best Production Design at the
93rd Academy Awards. Following the release of
Tenet, Thomas served as an executive producer on ''
Zack Snyder's Justice League'' (2021), a
director's cut of 2017's
Justice League. Thomas's twelfth film,
Oppenheimer (2023), is a
biographical thriller centered around the career of theoretical physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer and his involvement in the creation of the first
nuclear weapons. It marked her and her husband's first film to receive an
R-rating in the United States since
Insomnia, Thomas considers
Oppenheimer to be her and Nolan's "riskiest" film to date, explaining that she "didn't feel there was a guaranteed audience for this film. I hoped people would feel they needed to see it in theaters, but many people still weren't back post-COVID. And there's the fact we've heard nothing but 'theaters are over' for a while now. So it wasn't a no-brainer. Not only did it feel like it was a risky film to make, it felt like the stakes had never been higher". It was met with widespread critical acclaim and grossed over $950 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing biographical film; it also surpassed
Dunkirk as the highest-grossing World War II-related film of all time.
Oppenheimer won
many accolades, including top honours at the
96th Academy Awards, the
77th British Academy Film Awards, and the
81st Golden Globe Awards. Thomas is the first British female producer to win the Oscar for Best Picture. == Personal life ==