Photo: Leonardo Dicaprio in Christopher Nolan's Inception

Written, produced and directed by Christopher Nolan, the Inception movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Tom Berenger, Dileep Rao and Michael Caine. Inception will be released in both conventional and IMAX theaters. Related: Our older story about Christopher Nolan’s Inception

Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard on the sets of Inception

Shot at a budget of US$160 million and shot in Morocco, France and four other countries, Inception is Christopher Nolan’s first foray into the realm of what can be called psychological fiction movies.

In Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a skilled thief and a specialist in a new kind of corporate espionage. Cobb works in “subconscious security,” breaking into the minds of tycoons when they are asleep and extracting valuable secrets. How does he carry out this perfect, impossible-to-track heist? He drugs the business moguls, attaches them to a sci-fi contraption and steals secrets from deep within their subconscious during the dream state.

Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception

Cobb’s ability to catch dreams makes him a sought-after player for corporate espionage. No surprises then, that the spy games turn him into an international fugitive. Cobb has one shot at regaining his life – he needs to do his job in reverse: inception! Instead of a stealing an idea, Cobb and his team are hired to plant one. Can they do it? The world of dreams can be a dangerous and volatile one, they find.

Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are selling Inception as a Matrix meets Mission Impossible kind of movie. This summer, your mind is the scene of the crime, says Inception’s tagline.

Inception promises a smorgasbord of special effects – think Matrix-style fly-fighting, Bond-style shooting, and a whole lot of chases.

The stylish Christopher Nolan has described Inception as being similar to films such as The Matrix, Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor, and his own Memento. The director rubbished the idea that Inception might make use of the “second-life” idea from movies like Avatar. He said writing Inception took him around 10 years and he relied on his experiences with lucid dreaming during moments between sleep and wakefulness.

Christopher Nolan plans to give 3D the go-by in favour of the combination of Imax footage and high-definition film – a combination he used successfully in The Dark Knight. Computer-generated imagery will also be used for a few sequences.

Altered states and untrusted perception are themes that persist in Christopher Nolan’s films. Memento (2000) was about an amnesia victim; Insomnia (2002) was the story of a corrupt cop addled by lack of sleep; The Prestige (2006) was about rival illusionists; and the two Batman films (Batman Begins in 2005 and The Dark Knight in 2008) dealt with mind tricks.

Leonardo DiCaprio feels Christopher Nolan is the perfect director to helm Inception.

Describing the story as complex and ambiguous, Leonardo DiCaprio says Christopher Nolan has been able to pull off the film, which has complex narratives that work on a multitude of different layers.

Ellen Page, who plays one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s team members, says Inception is like reading a Haruki Murakami novel – “it’s fantasy, but instead of feeling like some strange surreal world it feels very honest.” The storyline is complicated, she says, but not confusing.

Christopher Nolan, the man’s who redefining film noir, admits that he tends to be drawn to the analogy of a maze. He says he pictures the story as a maze – he doesn’t want to watch his characters make the wrong choices; he wants to be in the maze with them.

Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard on the sets of Inception

This is the only new information available about the movie. Like we had reported earlier, the contempory sci-fi movie, that will be produced by Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas, has been described as being “set in the architecture of the mind.”

Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard on the sets of Inception via Coming Soon

The Warner movie is currently being filmed and will be released on July 16, 2010.

Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception

Inception stars Leonardo DiCapro, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy.

A teaser of the movie will be tacked on to Inglourious Basterds that will be released on released on August 21, 2009.

Maybe the teaser will give us a clue about Inception.

Meanwhile, the debate is on whether Christopher Nolan will film Batman 3 or not. While, Nolan has neither denied nor confirmed whether a sequel to The Dark Knight is in the works, there are reports that the movie will go into production in 2010.

Apparently, actor Gary Oldman, who plays Commissioner Gordon in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, revealed in end-July 2009, that the next Batman film will hit the floors in 2010, and will be released in 2011.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s next film is Maretin Scorcese’s Shutter Island, also known as Ashcliffe, which will be released in October 2009.

DiCaprio’s last releases were the 2008 Revolutionary Road and Body of Lies.

The actor is also producing and acting in two other movies, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and The Chancellor Manuscript, which will be released in 2011.

Leonardo Dicaprio may star in Christopher Nolan's Inception

The Warner movie will go into production in 2009 and will be released on July 16, 2010.

Inception will be produced by Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas. There are no details available about the plot of Inception except that the sci-fi movie is set in the “architecture of the mind.” Go figure.

In 2008, Leonardo Dicaprio appeared in Body of Lies with Russel Crowe, and Revolutionary Road with Kate Winslet.

Leonardo Dicaprio will be next seen in Martin Scorcese’s Ashcliffe, which was earlier known as Shutter Island. The movie that stars Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo Dicaprio is based on the novel Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.

Dicaprio and Ruffalo play two US Marshalls, in the 1950s, who go to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Ashecliffe, a hospital for the criminally insane, in Shutter Island.

Ashecliffe, will be released in October 2009.

Leonardo Dicaprio’s other forthcoming movies include The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and The Chancellor Manuscript, both of which are expected to be released in 2010. Dicaprio will produce both the movies.

Christopher Nolan is the director of movies like Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002), Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008).

Although speculations are rife that Christopher Nolan will direct the third installment of the Batman series, it now looks like even if Nolan does direct the movie, which he seems reluctant to do, it will be some time in the making.