Christopher Nolan reportedly has plans to shoot WWII film in France

By Stephanie Topacio Long Published December 28, 2015

Keeping “top secret” projects under wraps isn’t easy. In spite of going incognito while scouting locations in France, details about an upcoming film from acclaimed director Christopher Nolan have been outed by French newspaper La Voix du Nord.

According to the report, Nolan and his brother and frequent co-writer, Jonathan Nolan, recently visited Dunkirk, a coastal city in Northern France. After scouting for locations, the director is said to have ultimately requested a shooting permit. The city’s mayor, Patrice Vergriete, later revealed that a world-renowned director would be working on a production, set to film in the area in June 2016.

Recommended Videos

Of course, Nolan fits the description. His credits as a director include 2000’s Memento, The Dark Knight trilogy, 2010’s Inception, 2014’s Interstellar, and more. The latter grossed over $675.12 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo data.

Nolan and Warner Bros. currently have an untitled project scheduled to be released on July 21, 2017, so the timeline suggests that this would be the film. While no official plot details have been announced, La Voix du Nord reports that the plot will center on the evacuation of Dunkirk during Word War II. The challenging operation, which took place during May and June of 1940, enabled hundreds of thousands of Allied forces to escape France as German troops invaded the country.

The film sound interesting, especially for history buffs, but fans of The Dark Knight trilogy were likely hoping that Nolan’s upcoming project would be a sequel. There may, however, still be a glimmer of hope: The Dark Knight Rises did end with Batman and others in Europe, as the Huffington Post points out. If, by chance, the intel regarding a WWII drama isn’t correct, we could still hold out hope for another installment.

Stephanie Topacio Long

Contributor

Stephanie Topacio Long is a writer and editor whose writing interests range from business to books. She also contributes to…

Topics

Entertainment

This Oscar-winning movie quietly influenced Christopher Nolan and the MCU

Two men stand in a field of light in The Prestige.

Writers as far back as the 19th century had been inspired by the legendary rivalry between Antonio Salieri, Court Composer of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the phenomenal prodigy who stormed into the court at Vienna and showed up Salieri for the comparative mediocrity that he was. Alexander Pushkin had adapted the story as a play in 1830; Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov as an opera in 1897. And then, most famously and lastingly, there was the stage play, Amadeus, written by Peter Shaffer, which took London and then Broadway by storm in 1979 and 1981, respectively.

In short order, Shaffer adapted Amadeus into a screenplay, which was directed by the Czech master Milos Forman. This version, too, was a sensation, winning eight Oscars and widespread acclaim. F. Murray Abraham won the Oscar for his transcendently saturnine Salieri; Tom Hulce’s inanely giggling, faunlike Mozart is just as good, though not as well-remembered today, perhaps because Hulce largely retired from acting decades ago.

Entertainment

Like Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi classic Inception? Then watch these great movies now

Leonardo DiCaprio watches a top spins in Inception.

2023 belonged to Christopher Nolan. The British auteur is on the verge of winning multiple Oscars for Oppenheimer, a three-hour biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist behind the atomic bomb. Nolan is on a shortlist of filmmakers whose name alone can sell a film. Take Inception as an example. A film about dream stealing with complicated ideas and confusing equations isn't an easy sell. Yet, an emotionally moving story and visually stunning effects wowed audiences, resulting in a $839 million worldwide gross and four Oscars.

Inception is frequently mentioned on "best of" lists for the 2010s. While there are no direct comparisons to Inception, there are similar movie movies with the same themes and concepts. If you liked Inception, watch these three films, including another Nolan thriller, a sci-fi mystery from a terrific director, and an emotional romantic drama about heartbreak.
The Prestige (2006)

Entertainment

Is Christopher Nolan’s Tenet the misunderstood masterpiece some claim it to be?

John David Washington wears a mask in a still from Tenet

John David Washington in Tenet Warner Bros. / Warner Bros.

At one point during Christopher Nolan’s convoluted science-fiction contraption Tenet, the conversation briefly turns from impenetrable temporal logistics — the shop talk of this bewildering spy movie — to a little anecdote about Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. From the vantage of our present moment, it feels like an Easter egg sent backwards in time, like Nolan talking to his own future and teasing the giant phenomenon that was still, in 2020, a speck on the horizon. Of course, the truth is that the Father of the Atomic Bomb weighed heavily on the filmmaker’s mind five years ago, with one project blossoming in his imagination (à la the chemical theories of Oppie) as another came together. One might even see his latest blockbuster — his magnum opus,Oppenheimer, that's on the verge of Oscar glory — as a phoenix rising from the ashes of his only failure.