Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas to receive knighthood and damehood

Nolan won a best director Oscar last month for his biopic Oppenheimer. Thomas won a best picture Oscar for producing the film about the inventor of the atomic bomb. The government said the pair were being honoured for their services to film.

Nolan and Thomas have collaborated on all of his major feature films including The Dark Knight trilogy, 2010’s Inception, 2014’s Interstellar, 2017’s Dunkirk and 2020’s Tenet. The couple co-founded and run production company Syncopy which has been behind many of their blockbusters.

Meanwhile, the co-chief executive officer of Netflix, Ted Sarandos, has been made an honorary CBE for his services to creative industries. Sarandos has been responsible for content operations at the streaming giant since 2000 and was appointed to co-CEO of Netflix in July 2020.

Leading figures from the world of artificial intelligence have also been awarded honours.

Dr Demis Hassabis, CEO and Co-Founder of DeepMind, has been knighted for services to artificial intelligence.

Matthew Clifford, adviser to the Government on AI, and Ian Hogarth, Chairman of the Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, have been made CBEs.

Clifford is the Co-Founder of Entrepreneur First, an international talent investor and start-up accelerator founded in 2011. He is also Chairman of the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency.

Hogarth co-founded the music concert discovery service Songkick and has co-authored the annual State of AI Report since 2018.