Christopher Nolan has been approached to direct the next 007 movie.

It’s early days, but informal talks have begun between Nolan, his representatives and the powers behind the James Bond pictures, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G .Wilson.

Nolan, who made the Batman trilogy Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises — and had time for Inception in between — would be a cool choice after Sam Mendes decided not to shoot Bond 24.

Following the amazing box-office and critical success of Skyfall, Mendes was close to saying ‘yes’ to the next instalment, but had to withdraw because of his theatre commitments Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and King Lear with Simon Russell Beale at the National Theatre.

Also, a lot of unconfirmed chatter has started about Mendes running the National Theatre once Sir Nicholas Hytner steps down in March 2015 after a glorious decade at the helm of the theatrical powerhouse on the South Bank.

There are all sorts of reasons why Nolan might not want to do the next Bond film, though he is known to be an admirer of Bond star Daniel Craig.

For starters, he’s in pre-production of his own next big film, Interstellar, with Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, and he might prefer not to go straight from one huge production into another.
But as one of my Bond experts commented: ‘It does no harm for Broccoli and Wilson to talk with Nolan, even if nothing happens this time round.’

Mendes told me that there would be at least a year to 18 months of pre-production preparation and then six months of filming involved in Bond 24, and the producers want to shoot the follow-up soon after.

That would be a heavy workload for anyone.

But it would be fascinating to see a film-maker of Nolan’s standing build on what Mendes and the 007 gang has already done with Bond.