Is Christopher Nolan directing the new James Bond movie? Is Daniel Craig out?

In a piece of news that can potentially have wide implications, it is being reported that Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception and Interstellar, will helm the next James Bond film.

According to Birth.Movies.Death’s Phil Nobile Jr., the IMDb Pro page (a paid subscription version of the standard IMDb) for Bond 25 lists Nolan’s production company Syncopy (which he operates with wife Emma Thomas) as the producers of the film. Now, Nolan doesn’t produce films that he doesn’t direct (with the exception of Man of Steel, which he also contributed the story for), so it is being said that Syncopy’s involvement in the film could mean that Nolan has been hired to helm the project after all.

IMDbPro - because this is totally info worth paying for. pic.twitter.com/jW4LwWwqbv

— Phil Nobile Jr. (@PhilNobileJr) May 3, 2017

According to the movie website Screen Rant, Bond fan account Bond25Film reached out to IMDb, who confirmed that the news is indeed true.

It appears that the rumours about SYNCOPY are true. IMDb has confirmed that #Bond25 is correctly listed under Nolan's production company. pic.twitter.com/3vy5sqPoS6

— Bond 25 (@Bond25Film) May 4, 2017

Nolan has long been a fan of the Bond franchise, going so far as to include elaborate pre-credit action sequences in his movies as an homage to the Bond movie tradition.

“It’s a great franchise, and I grew up absolutely loving it,” he once said in an episode of BBC’s Newsnight.

Recently, the franchise has been in the news for the will-he-won’t-he star Daniel Craig has been playing about returning as Agent 007 for the fifth time. His previous outing as the spy, 2015’s Spectre, was received with mixed reactions from fans and critics, but ended up with almost $900 million at the worldwide box office.

The actors who have been rumoured to replace Craig are Tom Hiddleston, Idris Elba and Nolan favourite Tom Hardy. However, the most recent development in the Bond saga suggested that Craig is still the top choice to return, as the series finds a new distributor after the producer’s deal with Sony ended with Spectre.

Could the new home be Nolan’s Syncopy and his home studio Warner Bros?

The acclaimed director is currently gearing up for the release of his World War II survival thriller Dunkirk for a July release.