Christopher Nolan has never directed a romantic comedy, and he does not sound eager to start. Making his first-ever appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the film-maker behind Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight said he would be "terrified" to take on the genre.

Nolan told Fallon that directing a romantic comedy would be "incredibly difficult." He went further, praising the craft itself: people who direct comedy do "one of the hardest things in the world," he said. The Hollywood Reporter

The comments are a striking contrast from a director best known for labyrinthine thrillers and sprawling historical epics — films built on spectacle, scale and non-linear structure rather than the timing and warmth that comedy demands. Nolan's admission is, in effect, a genuine tribute to a craft far from his own.

Romantic comedy was not the only genre on Nolan's mind. In a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said his current project, The Odyssey, "whets my appetite" for directing a horror film. The Odyssey is an adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic, and it stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway. The Hollywood Reporter

For audiences, the takeaway is straightforward. The director whose filmography runs from Memento to Oppenheimer may still have genres he has not yet cracked — and at least one, horror, he sounds increasingly keen to try.