Christopher Nolan's next movie is apparently a romantic thriller

Is Christopher Nolan about to make a movie where the wife actually lives?

The director's mysterious next film, which will be released in 2020, is being "described as a romantic thriller," Production Weekly reported on Tuesday. The tone of the movie, according to this report, is evidently a cross between North by Northwest and Nolan's own Inception.

This would certainly be a departure for Nolan, who has rarely emphasized romance in his films. In fact, he's been criticized for the odd number of movies he's made that revolve around a character whose love interest either dies during the course of the film or is already dead when it begins. That's true of Following, Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar.

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Perhaps Nolan will buck that trend with this next film — or maybe the dead significant other will just be even more central to the plot than usual.

Little else is known about this next Nolan movie, although Tuesday's report also confirms that his cinematographer from Interstellar and Dunkirk will return. Warner Bros. has given the untitled movie a release date of July 17, 2020, and with Nolan's last five films all having made at least $500 million at the box office, he's essentially got a blank check for the foreseeable future.