The Disney-Fox merger in 2019 effectively ended Nichols’ four years’ worth of development Alien Nation film.

In 2022, the Take Shelter and Mud filmmaker then pivoted to his long-gestating idea to adapt Danny Lyon’s 1967 photojournalistic book, The Bikeriders, which chronicles Chicago-area motorcycle club in the 1960s.

Nichols was turned onto the book by older brother, Ben Nichols, two decades ago. Ben is the front man for the Memphisian rock band Lucero, and in 2005, he channeled his love for Lyon’s book into song called “Bikeriders.”

The song would serve as frequent reminder for Jeff to do his own fictionalized take, one that would include love story of Kathy (Jodie Comer) and Benny (Oscar nominee Austin Butler).

My Oscar Book:

By 2022, Nichols had assembled an ensemble that boasted Comer, Butler, Tom Hardy, Michael Shannon, Mike Faist, Norman Reedus, Boyd Holbrook and Damon Herriman. However, another snag emerged when Butler’s preceding film, Dune: Part Two, expected him to shave his head to play the hairless baddie, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Nichols respectfully issued a plea to Butler, and while Butler credits Denis Villeneuve and producers for accommodating the request with bald cap, Nichols praises Butler for protecting his film.

Nichols then shot the film in late 2022, targeting fall 2023 festival run that eventually turned into August 31 premiere at the 50th Telluride Film Fest.

Then 20th Century positioned the crime drama for December release in the awards season. However, the industry’s double strike upended that release plan due to not having the cast for advanced promotion. In November, Focus Features, which released Nichols’ 2016 drama Loving, acquired the film’s distribution from New Regency, opting instead for a summer 2024 release and robust promotional campaign.

Despite these never-ending obstacles en route to his sixth feature, Nichols remains rather zen about the dynamic turn of events, due to his wife’s support.

“I live in Texas, and when I talked to my wife, she was like, ‘Nobody gives a shit about this,’” Nichols says. “Everybody in the industry is all concerned about dating and everything else, but she was like, ‘The rest of the country doesn’t care about that. They’ll go see it when they go see it.’ I had to adopt that philosophy.”

I’m not a filmmaker who strategically thinks about their career. I put all my eggs in one basket, and when one doesn’t work out, it takes me a little while to get started on the next one. I don’t write multiple things at once. But I was clear when I finished Loving. I was on that tour and people asked me what was next, and there’s this quote from Mark Twain that said, “Creatively, you have to fill up the well.” It actually gets empty. You can drain it. In 2016, the well was empty. I had to go do some work to fill it up. So I’m slowly starting to collect a group of scripts now, and hopefully, if the world stays stitched together, I’ll get to keep making movies over the next five, ten years.

Making movies slowly

I love the fact that it’s coming out in the summer. We can have people ride up on bikes and do all this other stuff. I live in Texas. I don’t live in L.A., and when I talked to my wife about it, she was like, “Nobody gives a shit about this.” Everybody in the industry is all concerned about dating and everything else, but she was like, “The rest of the country doesn’t care about that. They’ll go see it when they go see it.” So I had to adopt that philosophy.

Exactly. He found the book at Barnes & Noble and I found it in his apartment. We were both captivated with it, so I would eventually write the movie, but he wrote the song first. We were both inspired by it in our own respective mediums, but I’ve been listening to that song since it came out in 2005. I just had it in a playlist, and every once in a while, it would come up on shuffle. And I’d be like, “Man, I’ve got to write that biker movie.” So I love his song, and we have it over the end credits. There’s something about it. It has a feeling that I love dipping myself into, and so he was a great person to talk to about it, because he was obviously inspired by these stories in his own right.

I would call him late at night as I was working on the script and say, “I’m thinking about maybe fictionalizing this. What do you think about the name of the Vandals? Is that a good fictional motorcycle club name?” And he’d say, “Well, there’s a punk rock band called The Vandals.” And I was like, “Yeah, I know, but I think we can get away with it. I don’t think there are any motorcycle gangs with that name. And Kathy is definitely going to be the narrator. What if I broke her narration into three separate timelines? That way, we get three separate Kathys, and I change her personality between these three timelines.”

Ben is the one I would always check things against in terms of cheesiness. He’d tell me if I was going too far.

You recreated photos from the book–iconic bridge shot of Benny (Austin Butler)

We shot in Cincinnati, which is right on the Ohio River, and that original photo was taken in Louisville. It’s the same river, but a different bridge built in the same era. And as we were driving around scouting all these other locations, we were like, “Man, that is the bridge. That looks just like the bridge. We’ve got to get that in the movie.” And it wasn’t actually scripted that way. I knew I wanted Benny leaning over the pool table; that was baked into the script, but I didn’t know we would be able to find a bridge like that. So I had this epiphany as we were starting to storyboard and break down that chase sequence.

We had to be very specific about it because it’s a period piece, and you can’t just go shoot a motorcycle chase scene.

You’ve got to really be specific about your wedges, and the chase sequence was scripted to begin in town and end in this rural area. So it was like, “What if the bridge that he goes over connects the town part from the rural part? Ah, that makes total sense.” So that bridge was just sitting there, and that was just fortune smiling down on me.

Austin Butler in wig?

Your films set in the South or Midwest,about blue-collar 

But it’s such a strange question because all these characters are such specific products of the place that they come from. So the only two you could overlap, really, would be the Hayes Brothers with Ellis, because they’re both from Southeast Arkansas. There’s similarities to the Lovings, but they’re in Virginia. Take Shelter, by benefit of bad producer that I didn’t like, had to be shot outside of Cleveland, so Arkansas became Ohio, and those worlds don’t overlap. You’ve got to really commit to regional specificity, and that means they don’t get to cross oceans of time. They are where they are because that’s who they are.

Paul Sparks is one of the greatest actors, and we need more Paul Sparks movies. I would love to see him in the lead of bigger film. I don’t know if it’ll happen or when it’ll happen, but I sure hope it does happen. But Mike is different. He is not just a collaborator; he has become family to me. I owe my career to Michael Shannon. I learned how to direct from directing Michael Shannon. So, from the outside, it can feel kind of cute, but it’s not. I love that guy, and I want him in movies because he’s the greatest actor in the world. And if you’re a director and you have access to the greatest actor in the world, it makes sense that you would call him all the time.

The Bikeriders says: a man expressing emotions is not emasculating

There’s tension in masculinity, which is complex. There’s duality to it. There are parts of masculinity that are undeniable and attractive, but there are also parts of it that are aggressive and violent. Everybody uses that word toxic. But that tension is really what The Bikeriders is talking about. You can actually hold these two things at once in the same space, and isn’t that frustrating? Isn’t that challenging?

In this day and age, people want to be unique, they want to have their own identity, whether that’s defined through race or sexual orientation. “This is who I am. I’m not a monolith. I’m not part of anything, I’m unique.” And maybe by being associated with things that are dangerous and could hurt you, that gives you leg up in the identity battle and in defining yourself.

The movie doesn’t set out to answer that question; it just sets out to pose it.

Alien Nation

The script that came out of the Alien Nation processes is at Paramount now. It’s under a different title, because it was original script that I wrote. I would love to make it, but it’s a big movie, though. It’s an expensive movie, and when you want to work at those budget levels, you just have to turn over control to that system, and that system is strange. That system is complicated, and it operates  out of fear. Nobody wants to get fired, or to mess up.