Warner Bros. Pictures has put the Interstellar director’s upcoming mystery film on the calendar for July 21, 2017, sandwiching the movie between the next installment of the Planet of the Apes franchise and the Spider-Man reboot co-produced by Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios.
Related: Murph! Even if you loved Interstellar you’ll enjoy this skewering from Screen Junkies
So far, there’s little — if any — credible information out there about Nolan’s next feature, but the scheduling of the film between two high-profile projects like War of the Planet of the Apes and the still-untitled Spider-Man movie could lend itself to two very different, but plausible scenarios. On one hand, the studio might feel that the mystery movie will stand on its own due to being dramatically different from the other two genre projects around it. On the other hand, the studio might believe the film will be so big that it doesn’t need to worry about competition from either film.
Of course, the real reason for scheduling the film’s release date could be a little bit of both — or none of the above — when it comes down to it.
As it stands now, Nolan’s film will go up against at least two other films that same weekend. Universal Pictures’ Pitch Perfect 3 is also scheduled to premiere July 21, as well as Lucy and The Fifth Element director Luc Besson’s sci-fi adventure Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which stars Dane DeHaan, Cara Delevingne, and Clive Owen.
That month is shaping up to be a busy one for movie fans, with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales also scheduled to hit theaters July 7.
While Nolan’s most recent high-profile project was the cosmic odyssey Interstellar, the celebrated filmmaker is currently making the promotional rounds in support of The Quay Brothers in 35mm, a retrospective on legendary stop-motion animators The Quay Brothers. Nolan not only curated the series of short films about the brothers, but also contributed his own short, simply titled Quay.
