Christopher Nolan thinks a biopic is “not a useful genre” and “fails you completely,” he discloses in a recent interview.

Additionally, he doesn't consider his smash success Oppenheimer, a biopic, according to Variety.

The director joined his producer and wife, Emma Thomas, and author Kai Bird, whose book American Prometheus was a basis for Oppenheimer, in a City University of New York event.

Bird asked the director about why Oppenheimer doesn't go into the childhood of the title character.

Christopher Nolan on biopics

“There is a tendency in biography post-Freud to attribute characteristics of the person you're dealing with to their genetics from their parents. It's a very reductive view of a human being,” Nolan said. “If you're writing a book that's 500 pages or 1000 pages, there's a way to balance that with their individuality and experiences. When you compress and strip down to the necessary simplicity of a screenplay, it's incredibly reductive.”

Nolan adds, “This is where the concept of a biopic fails you completely as a genre. It's not a useful genre. I love working in useful genres. In this film…it's the heist film as it applies to the Manhattan Project and the courtroom drama as it applies to the security hearings. It's very useful to look at the conventions of those genres and how they can pull the audience and how they can give me a communication with the audience.”

“Biopic is something that applies to a film that is not quite registering in a dramatic fashion. You don't talk about ‘Laurence of Arabia' as a biopic. You don't talk about ‘Citizen Kane' as a biopic. It's an adventure film. It's a film about somebody's life. It's not a useful genre; the same drama is not a useful genre. It doesn't give you anything to hold onto,” the director said.

We're guessing Christopher Nolan's next film will not be a biopic.