IBOutlet always nil

I've already looked at all the other entries for this question. I have been stuck for a while on a problem I have been unable to solve, any suggestion for an avenue of approach would be sincerely appreciated.

I have a moderately large app that allocs a window controller then loads a window using an XIB containing a single window which contains an AVPlayerView that was placed in the window. The AVPlayerView is wired to an IBOutlet called playerView. The window loads when it is supposed to and then an AVPlayer is created with a URL and is to be assigned to the player of the AVPlayerView, however I always find that the IBOutlet playerView is always nil at the point of trying to make the assignment. I cannot figure out why the IBOutlet is nil. Another anomaly is that the AVPlayerWindow will not become key when so ordered even though there are no other windows on the screen. I know for a fact that I have the outlet wired up in the XIB. Any thoughts?

There are 11,000 lines of code in the app. Here is the tiny portion that attempts to attach the player to the AVPlayerView.

        fileURL = [self prepareStringAndBecomeAURL:filePath isDirectory:NO needFileURL:NO];

    //    thePlayer = [self prepareToPlay:fileURL];
        thePlayer = [AVPlayer playerWithURL:fileURL];
        if (thePlayer == nil) {
            [self popUpErrorMessageWithoutCode:@"Unable to create a video player."];
        } else {
            playerView.player = thePlayer;
            if (thePlayer != nil) {
                [theMainWindow orderOut:self];
                [self showMoviesWindow:self];
                [self performSelector:@selector(continueHandleMovieSelected) withObject:nil afterDelay:1]; // wait for window to appear
            }
        }
    }

    - (void)continueHandleMovieSelected
    {
        [playerView.player play];
    }

No, no exceptions.

Window controller and nib are created in another module, an AppController:

    - (IBAction)showMoviePlayerWindow:(id)sender
    {
        if (![self myMoviePlayerWindowController]) {
            myMoviePlayerWindowController = [[MoviePlayerWindowController alloc] initWithWindowNibName:@"MoviePlayer"];
            [self set_myMoviePlayerWindowController:myMoviePlayerWindowController];
        }
        [[[self myMoviePlayerWindowController] window] center];
        [[[self myMoviePlayerWindowController] window] makeKeyAndOrderFront:self];
        [[self myMoviePlayerWindowController] showWindow:self];
    }