Like most auteur directors, Christopher Nolan has a shortlist of regular actors he recruits for his films. Cillian Murphy, who appeared in all three of Nolan’s Dark Knight movies, as well as Inception, is moving up in the ranks of that club, now that he’s joining the cast of Dunkirk, Nolan’s upcoming WWII drama.
Very little is known about Dunkirk right now, except that it’s going to be a fictional story set amidst Operation Dynamo, the Allied rescue mission that ferried 330,000 troops across the English Channel to prevent the advancing Nazi forces from capturing them all (which might have ended the war right then and there). Nolan himself wrote the script, so we’re curious to see what sort of mind-fuck he’s built into the historical background.
Tom Hardy (another repeat Nolan collaborator) is set to star alongside Murphy along with Kenneth Branagh, Mark Rylance and, in his feature-film debut, Harry Styles. We’re assuming Michael Caine will end up in there as well, because Caine has been in literally every Nolan film in the past decade. And shockingly enough, Hans Zimmer is doing the score.
Dunkirk is expected to hit theaters on July 21, 2017.