Christopher Nolan basked in the glory of Oppenheimer and its numerous Oscars, taking home the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director, alongside numerous others. The awards season culminated a few months back and the man is reportedly now back in the writing room penning his next script, as was reported a few months back. Now, a new rumor claims we’re not far off from an announcement, with his next film slated to be revealed in the coming few weeks.
X (formerly known as Twitter) account EmpireCityBO is speculating that we can expect an announcement on Christopher Nolan’s next film in the upcoming 2-4 weeks. The final bidding war is in progress between two studios Nolan has worked with off late – Universal and Warner Bros. – with Universal having the upper hand so far. The account even threw Paramount as a guess in a third possible studio bidding for the rights, although seeing as they haven’t worked with Nolan since distributing Interstellar, this is a very distant possibility.
It’s worth noting that this is pure conjecture at this point. Having said that, the account has had a decent track record with predicting such tidbits in the past. Besides, Nolan typically does tend to take anywhere between 2-3 years for his movies, with the announcements arriving closer to release. Here’s a list of some of his past projects to compare their announcement dates with their release dates:
- Interstellar was announced on Mar 08, 2023 and released on Nov 07, 2014, nearly 1.5 years later.
- Dunkirk was announced on Dec 28, 2015 and released on Jul 21, 2017, almost after 1.5 years.
- Tenet was announced on Jan 26, 2019 and released on Aug 26, 2020 (UK) and Sep 03, 2020 (US), about 1.75 years later.
- Oppenheimer was announced on Sep 09, 2021 and released on Jul 21, 2023, close to 1.75 later.
Judging by those timelines, assuming Nolan does intend to aim for a July 2026 release window, we’re officially less than 2 years away. As such, even if we don’t hear an announcement in the next few weeks, there’s every possibility that we’ll hear something by the end of this year. Assuming Nolan retreads familiar ground and follows the exact same timeline that he did for Oppenheimer, we should be due for an announcement in Sep 2024 with a potential release date of Jul 2026.
Universal does not have any Untitled Movie slots parked in Jul 2026, with its final summer movie being Shrek 4 currently set for a Jul 01, 2026 release. As of now, Jul 17, 2024 appears to be the most likely 2026 date if Nolan intends to make it back to theaters that summer season. Whether that turns out to be true is something we’ll hopefully find out in a few weeks or months at most.
