Lifetime 007 fan Christopher Nolan has held "informal talks" over directing the next James Bond film, according to The Daily Mail's Baz Bamigboye. Usually the most trusted source for news out of the Bond camp, Baz claims that The Dark Knight trilogy director's representatives have met with producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson over helming Bond 24, which is currently rudderless. Pre-production on the next 007 film was actually halted earlier this year when Sam Mendes reluctantly turned down overtures to direct a follow-up to the record breaking and critically acclaimed box office smash Skyfall, citing scheduling conflicts with his theatre commitments. With Mendes out of the picture, Nolan as a replacement, the hottest director on the planet right now, would certainly appease many but we should stress this is extremely early days and informal talks are far from a firm offer being made. In truth, it could be little more than three people sitting down in a London cafe talking over the possibility but as Baz's sources say;
It does no harm for Broccoli and Wilson to talk with Nolan, even if nothing happens this time round.
This is of course true but the inconvenient truth is that there may not even be a possibility of it happening with Nolan currently prepping to shoot his ambitiously scaled sci-fi movie Interstellar in a few months time, a blockbuster about time travel and wormholes that has a firm November 2014 release date to fulfil. That movie is in the middle of casting with Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Michael Caine so far attached, and more names expected to be added soon, and could well be a project that Nolan, who usually has 100% focus on one movie at a time, wouldn't want to jeopardise by agreeing to tackle the Bond saga back-to-back. He may not even have a choice if the calendars don't match up. But... serious talks can't happen without informal talks taking place first... so it could be the first step towards something special. And if EON Productions are willing to wait, as they did for Mendes the first time around (and I kind of expected they would this time too) then that offer could be much more agreeable to Nolan, who doesn't come across as a man who would take a job this size without his full attention. As perfect as it sounds for us to imagine the director of Inception taking on the next James Bond movie, particularly after Skyfall itself was so immersed in the kind of narrative/style as Nolan's own The Dark Knight, we should remind ourselves of the potential pitfalls for Nolan that persist every time he is mentioned in the same breath as the 007 films. He even is aware of some of the following himself when he admitted last year that he would be keen to direct a James Bond movie but only if the circumstances were right;
"It would have to be the right situation and the right time in their cycle of things."
These are questions he would need to answer; Would he really be happy taking on the Bond saga part-way through this current continuity... with a full cast (Daniel Craig, Ralph Fiennes, Naomi Harris, etc) already in place, and a character arc/backstory already setup? - Though he is known to be an admirer of Daniel Craig's Bond, which is a HUGE plus in this column. Does he not feel like he's got his childhood Bond fanatism out of himself already with the Batman saga and Inception, which owed a great deal to the Bond movies of old? Would he really want to take on the challenge of another epically sized commercial franchise after his Dark Knight trilogy? With the Bond saga not being one he himself has created, would he be able to gain the full control on it that Warner Bros gave him to make the Batman movies - being able to hire his own screenwriters and production crew? At the end of the day, as a massive Bond fan that we all know Chris Nolan to be, those questions may prove to be inconsequential to the lauded British filmmaker other than the thought of... just who could Michael Caine play? Click "next" below to read our four reasons why Chris Nolan should direct Bond 24...