“He basically told me, ‘I have this thought about how you would approach Superman. I immediately got it, loved it and thought: That is a way of approaching the story I’ve never seen before that makes it incredibly exciting. I wanted to get Emma and I involved in shepherding the project right away and getting it to the studio and getting it going in an exciting way.”

Christopher Nolan also discusses how the Superman films have been approached in a lot of different ways. He says this emphasizing the idea that Batman exists in a world where he is the only superhero. Nolan says that his approach on a Superman film would be very similar: “I only know the way that has worked for us that’s what I know how to do. Each serves to the internal logic of the story. They have nothing to do with each other.”

With all this talk about superhero films, Christopher Nolan continues on to explain the current progress of the Batman trilogy. Nolan explains that his brother, Jonathan Nolan is “now doing the hard work,” writing the script which is based on David Goyer’s story ideas. “My brother is writing a script for me and we’ll wait to see how it turns out…he’s struggling to put it together into the epic story that you want it to be.”

“Without getting into specifics, the key thing that makes the third film a great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story. And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story. We have a great ensemble, that’s one of the attractions of doing another film, since we’ve been having a great time for years.

I’m very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we’ve done with the characters. My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff. Unlike the comics, these thing don’t go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful. Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we’re telling. And it hearkens back to that priority of trying to find the reality in these fantastic stories. That’s what we do.”

Thanks for the tip, Rory (filmfanatic)! Let’s hear what you guys think in the comments!!

[via Los Angeles Times]

The comment could have been made to be intentionally vague, since I would even consider a 135 minute film to be ‘about two hours, give or take’. But what can be taken from this comment is that there is most likely a rough cut of Inception completed, possibly even being screened already.

A two hour length may seem short considering the six months of production and the ensemble cast, but outside of his Batman fims Nolan has kept his running times close to two hours. Memento is 113 minutes in length, Insomnia is 118 minutes, and The Prestige is 130 minutes. And as forum member chee noted, this comically would make Nolan a man of his word. After his second bathroom break during the BD-Live screening of The Dark Knight, Nolan joked that he would make a shorter film next time.

Now to get a few things straight, the rumors put Christopher Nolan as the ‘Godfather’ figure to the project (presumably due to his very successful work rebooting Batman) with Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer writing the screenplay.  But, according to IESB, word is that Chris Nolan’s involvement is more to help out his brother Jonathan than, say, just to help out Warner Bros. get another franchise off the ground.  The rumblings go further to mention that the reason Chris would want to be in this type of role is that The Man of Steel will be Jonathan Nolan’s directorial debut.

On the one hand it seems a little crazy that Warner Bros. would let Jonathan Nolan take on a $200-million Superman film for his first outing as director.  But with Chris’ support and the respect Warner Bros. has for the Nolan team, it does feel in the realm of possibility.  IESB’s rumor mill continues on to put Christopher Nolan as the director of the future Justice League movie.  Although intriguing, I think that’s one that just needs to stay completely in the rumor mill for now.

>>Update 2.20.10<<: According to DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson, this is nothing more than a rumor. Read more over at MTV.com.

According to Nikki Finke (who we all got familiar with yesterday) and her pal Mike Flemming, Warner Bros is looking to reboot it’s Superman franchise soon, and they turned to Christopher Nolan to oversee development. Nikki’s insiders say Nolan “has been asked to play a ‘godfather’ role and ensure The Man Of Steel gets off the ground” after the last film failed nearly 4 years ago. Of course, Superman isn’t the only superhero film Chris will be working on, apparently he has an idea for Batman 3. Nikki confirms her story yesterday on Deadline.com saying David S. Goyer and Jonathan Nolan are currently working on the script.

Deadline.com’s insider says “It would definitely not be a followup to Superman Returns,”  and Christopher Nolan isn’t likely to direct. Bryan Singer isn’t out of the picture yet, either is Superman himself, Brandon Routh. The history of the Superman film franchise is a long and complicated one. The series has had it’s ups and downs, and is quite familiar with long stages of development that are often nothing but dead ends. Warner Bros is looking to clean up and bring focus to the comic book’s film franchise, and they’re hoping Christopher Nolan can do it. Hell, he did it exceedingly well for Batman.

To understand the history of it all, head over to Deadline.com to read Nikki and Mike’s excellent article explaining it all.

“Of course, Goyer’s feature career is really heating up, since he co-wrote Batman Begins, and penned the story for The Dark Knight, and is now writing the third Batman installment with Chris Nolan’s brother Jonah. ‘As my feature projects have started ramping up again, I felt I was being pulled in too many directions,’ Goyer said in a statement.”

Perhaps this is something Nikki Finke has been told in confidence, or it’s very possible she could just be speculating. Hopefully we will have more confirmation on the validly of this statement soon. And considering this story is going to be all over the internet this week, I suspect we might. Read the full article over at Deadline.com.

Leonardo DiCaprio, star of Inception, was recently interviewed by Inquirer about no longer being the star of “the biggest movie” of all time. After saying very nice things about his experience on Titanic, what he thought of Avatar, and what it was like starring in Shutter Island, he went on to talk about working with Christopher Nolan in Inception.

“I don’t know what I’m allowed to say about Inception” the actor said after chuckling. “I don’t even know what I’m allowed to say about Shutter Island, to be quite honest.” Instead, he talked about the two filmmakers: “Both Chris and Martin are great directors. The material and its complexity are what I’m attracted to. I’m not happy if I don’t have a lot to do. I’ve been lucky to work with people who want to tell stories that hit on different cylinders simultaneously. Shutter Island is definitely that.”

“Chris [is] delving into dream psychoanalysis and, at the same time, making a high-octane, surreal film that came from his mind. He wrote the entire thing, and it all made sense to him. It didn’t make sense to many of us when we were doing it. We had to do a lot of detective work (laughing) to figure out what the movie was about.”

Will anyone figure out what Inception is about? Let’s hope so. Read the rest of the article at Inquirer.net. Thanks to Jake088800 for the tip

The eleven-minute video features insight into “The Carte Blanche” concept that we’ve mentioned on the Nolan Fans Podcast. Meaning, with Christopher Nolan’s huge box office success with The Dark Knight, Warner Bros. has basically let him do whatever the heck he wants with Inception. It really is great to see such a talented director given the amount of budgetary flexibility shown here. We’ve already seen what sort of awesomeness this type of creative freedom can accomplish. (See James Cameron, Avatar).

Be warned. There are a few minor spoilers in this video. Although, it’s nothing that you haven’t heard before if you’ve read other news stories or forum posts here at Nolan Fans. Most of the detailed descriptions in this video are pure speculation. Enjoy!

[Thank you Chee for posting this on the forums!]

“I grew up watching James Bond films and loving those and watching spy movies with their globetrotting sensibility,” said Nolan. “We get to do that here, not just geographically but also in time and dimensions of reality as well. We get to make a movie that’s expansive, I suppose you’d say, in four dimensions.”

After the worldwide success of The Dark Knight, developing a project of this magnitude seemed a logical step.  But Producer Emma Thomas, Nolan’s wife, revealed that this was not necessarily the case with Inception. “It’s something that we had been talking about on and off for seven or eight years,” Emma explained.  ”Coming off of the The Dark Knight, the only thing we really knew is that we wanted to do something more personal. It seemed like the right time to do this. The fact that it’s really just an enormous movie — that wasn’t ever really a factor in the decision. This story lends itself to a movie of this size.”

With The Dark Knight, Nolan aimed to create a film larger in scale than he had done before, a trend that continues with Inception.  “We’re trying to tell a story on a massive scale, a true blockbuster scale – the biggest I’ve ever been involved with. We tried to make a very large-scale film with The Dark Knight and with this one we wanted to push that even further.”

In six months we’ll be able to see if all of Nolan’s efforts paid off to deliver a blockbuster film that truly feels personal. Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine.  It opens in both standard and IMAX theaters July 16th.

Over the past year we have followed the production of Nolan’s next motion picture, Inception. We added hundreds of photos from its production and filming, and we also added extensive screenshot galleries from all of Nolan’s films. We added downloadable versions of the screenplays for his films. We launched an audio podcast that has flourished into a neat project that now includes video live-streaming. We launched a YouTube channel with HD trailers, tv spots and other various Nolan related videos. And that’s not all.

Over the next year we hope to grow, and improve. Our goal is to continually raise the bar. To celebrate year two of NolanFans.com we launched a brand new design and layout. We are always looking for ways to improve the website, its content and its functionality. So take a look around. Let us know what you think. We are going to be adding new content and whatnot over the next couple weeks, so keep your eyes peeled.

Thanks for everything, everybody! Cake will be served shortly.

Check it out in Glorious Quicktime HD

Update… again: The videos on Making Of AND YouTube have been taken down. It seems Warner Bros. doesn’t want this thing out there just yet…

Last week some of our sharp-eyed forum members discovered that the Inception movie website, www.inceptionmovie.com, had begun changing. Since the site’s inception (ha) in August, there was a spinning top, much like the shot from the first teaser. Last week, the spinning top had begun slowing down. Each day, there was a drop in the speed of the spinning and it began wobbling more and more. On December 15th, it stopped. Inception’s viral marketing campaign had officially launched.

Clicking on the motionless top redirects you to: www.yourmindisthesceneofthecrime.com. Warner Bros. obtained this domain name on October 30, 2009.

This is “Mind Crime,” a maze game where the player can select a starting and ending position on a grid and then draw a solution path to connect the two. When the path is complete, selecting the “Play” button will start the game after creating more maze paths and dead ends. Your maze paths (initially drawn on paper) is converted into downtown city-streets. Once the games starts, you’re able to control your character and navigate through this maze city. Along the way, you’ll find that there are other people wondering about the city with green circles drawn around them. You’ll soon learn dislike these people. Once your character steps into a green circle, a siren sound is heard, the circle turns yellow, your health beings to drop, and that person starts chasing you. If you get too close to them, the circle turns to red. Avoid these bad guys, people.

If you’re unlucky enough to lose, the game turns into something resembling “I Am Legend” and a bunch of these bad guys come from out of nowhere and begin piling on top of you. If you are able to win, you’ll see a safe unlock and reveal a manila folder labeled “confidential.” Inside is the first Inception poster.

Let’s talk about www.yourmindisthesceneofthecrime.com for a bit. The website, obviously named after the film’s tagline: “your mind is the scene of the crime,” displays four boxes (shown below). The leftmost one is the only one light up or activated. It seems like the Inception viral marketing campaign will include the rest of these boxes as well with the possibility of either more games like this one or something else…

Mind Crime also has a Facebook page. We suggest you become a fan of this page, as well as, the Nolan Fans Facebook page if you haven’t already.