Christopher Nolan: when we'll see his next feature movie

We now know when we’ll be seeing director Christopher Nolan’s next movie.

The “Interstellar” director will reportedly release his next film in the summer of 2017. The movie will be released through Warner Bros., with whom Nolan worked for his last film “Interstellar” as well as others. 

There’s no information yet on what the film will be about. 

In today’s Hollywood, Nolan is what seems like almost an anomaly – a director who can open a movie on his or her name alone and without depending on relation to source material. Comic book and novel adaptations often rule the box office, but Nolan’s last film, the 2014 movie “Interstellar,” was written by the director and his brother Jonathan Nolan. The film became the 16th-highest-grossing movie of the year and received fairly positive reviews from critics. 

Nolan's other recent foray into original material came with the 2010 movie “Inception,” which did even better at the domestic box office, coming in as the sixth-highest-grossing film of the year. “Inception” was written by Nolan himself. 

Nolan has had a big effect on the Hollywood of the last several years. After making his name with films like 2000’s “Memento” (which was based on a short story by Jonathan Nolan) and the 2006 movie “The Prestige” (based on the novel by Christopher Priest), Nolan directed the 2005 movie “Batman Begins,” which kicked off the Dark Knight trilogy and brought Batman back into pop culture.

“Batman Begins” came at a very interesting time in superhero pop culture. Marvel still hadn’t quite perfected its formula (that wouldn’t come for a few years yet until the release of 2008’s “Iron Man”) and was releasing films based on its characters through other studios like Twentieth Century Fox. The most successful comic book film series was the “Spider-Man” film series starring Tobey Maguire and the "X-Men" film series released by Twentieth Century Fox, both of which had their brooding moments but were nothing compared to the dark vision of Nolan’s “Batman” films. “Batman Begins” arrived in the same year as the misfire “Elektra”; “Constantine,” which received mixed reviews; and the first “Fantastic Four” film starring Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis. 

With “Batman,” Nolan revived the character at the movies – the last outing with the Caped Crusader had been the critically panned “Batman & Robin” with George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He then directed what is often called the best superhero movie of all time, the 2008 movie “The Dark Knight,” a film which won actor Heath Ledger a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his turn as the Joker.

“Inception” was released in between his second and third “Batman” films, but “Inception” and “Interstellar” are Nolan’s two forays into original feature film material since his work on the Dark Knight trilogy. Would Nolan still get the same box office numbers if moviegoers didn’t know him from the Dark Knight trilogy? Probably not. And “Interstellar” did far less well than “Inception,” with “Inception” grossing more than $100 million more at the domestic box office. 

But the news of Nolan’s next project still gets people interested, and if it’s not based on a book, comic book, or previous movie, it will be far different from most of the other movies at the multiplex.