Christopher Nolan to direct untitled Warner Brothers movie for 2017

American film director Christopher Nolan at the 2013 European film premiere of Man of Steel in Leicester Square, London, UK.[Wikimedia Commons/ Photo by Richard Goldschmidt/ Derivative by Keraunoscopia]

Warner Bros. has announced that they will release a new Christopher Nolan film by July 21, 2017. No details about the film have been announced, no writer has been attached, and even the genre of the movie is still unknown. The only confirmation is the release date and that Nolan will be directing the project. 

According to a report from Variety, all distribution rights will belong to Warner Bros., unlike Nolan's previous film "Interstellar" which saw Paramount Pictures handling domestic releases and Warner Bros. handling international releases. Warner Bros. was also the sole distributor for Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy and his sci-fi hit "Inception." 

The report also states that this is the fourth film slated for a July 21, 2017 release. The other three are "Pitch Perfect 3," "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," and a currently untitled animation film to be produced by Blue Sky, DreamWorks Animation and Fox. 

A report from Collider speculates that Nolan might direct a new Batman film starring Ben Affleck as the titular character, setting the film in the current DC Expanded Universe which began with "Man of Steel" and will be further flourished in next year's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice." 

However, the solo Batman film is reportedly slated to be written and directed by Ben Affleck himself, who won the Academy Award for Best Director for his film "Argo." On the other hand, the report says that Nolan stepping in to direct the film would give Affleck more space to work on his other directorial project, "Live By Night." 

If Nolan's new film is indeed the solo Batman flick, then this would sandwich the film squarely between "Wonder Woman" and Zack Snyder's "Justice League Part One." It will also open a week after Fox Studios' "War of the Planet of the Apes" and just a week before the new "Spider-Man" reboot starring Tom Holland.