There’s no filmmaker of his generation that has mastered the art of mass-market spectacle like Christopher Nolan, and he’s officially back. This time with Zendaya and Anne Hathaway.
Recently, Deadline reported that Christopher Nolan is off the mark and he’s deep into casting his next film with exciting names trickling in slowly, and fans are understandably excited for what the filmmaker has in store for them. Initially, the information that came from industry insiders was that Tom Holland is going to co-star with frequent Christopher Nolan collaborator Matt Damon in a spiritual remake of the 1980s action thriller Blue Thunder about a specialized police helicopter.
But it wasn’t until recently that fans really started digesting which direction Nolan is going with this new film when it was announced that the film has also cast Zendaya and Anne Hathaway. The two had earlier appeared in a Paolo Sorrentino-directed Bvlgari commercial, where they were dressed in some of the most elegant gowns that have ever been sewn. Fittingly, in the comment section of the commercial on YouTube, there were fans who hoped that the two would one day appear in the same film. Well, on June 17, 2026, these fans will get their wish granted.
On the popular Ringer podcast, The Big Picture, the hosts also speculated about which direction Christopher Nolan might take with the premise of Matt Damon and Tom Holland flying a specialized helicopter. They joked that Nolan will stick to the themes he explored numerous times before — namely, time travel and a dead wife. It’s astounding when you start to actually think about how these themes heavily feature in Christopher Nolan films.
So perhaps either Zendaya or Anne Hathaway’s fate is determined in the upcoming film. Another direction Nolan might take in this yet-untitled film is to stack the cast full of marquee names, like he did in Oppenheimer or Inception. Fans are already making jokes about how sometimes these stars are underutilized in these films, and a fan took to Twitter to predict that Zendaya and Hathaway are only going to get two lines each.
Deadline, however, reiterates that all this leaking information about the nature of the film and the cast are just rumors for now, because Nolan has not confirmed a single thing. And we prefer it that way. Nolan is one of the few remaining filmmakers that still creates events around the release of his films, so we’d rather find out the full context inside the theater as Nolan intended.
Regardless of what the movie ends up being about, a new Nolan film in the pipeline is always cause for celebration. We’re especially happy for Tom Holland who, unlike the other members of the cast named so far, hasn’t had too many films outside the Spider-Man series that were particularly successful at the box office. And if Nolan’s run is anything to go by, that will soon change. As for Zendaya, this might fully cement her as a movie star, as it might enable her to finally fully shed the image of her demanding role as Rue from Euphoria from fans’ minds.