Coming off three increasingly ambitious blockbusters (The Dark Knight, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises), Christopher Nolan can do pretty much anything he wants. In the six months since the release of The Dark Knight Rises, there have been rumours that he’d tackle another superhero movie or even the next entry in the Star Wars franchise, but Variety is reporting that Nolan plans to direct something far more original next. Working from a screenplay by Jonathan Nolan—who has contributed to the scripts for all of his brother’s best films, including Memento, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight Rises—Christopher Nolan is in negotiations to make Interstellar his next film.

If that title sounds familiar it’s because the project was announced several years ago with Steven Spielberg attached to direct. Building on the ideas of physicist Kip Thorne, the screenplay deals with time travel, alternate dimensions, and a group of explorers who travel through a wormhole. This mind bending premise sounds like a much better fit for the Inception director’s sensibilities than Spielberg’s, and reports suggest that Jonathan Nolan has cemented that connection, extensively re-working the script he originally developed for the Lincoln auteur.

Nolan has included science-fiction elements in many of his previous films, but this will be his first chance to fully immerse himself in the world that spawned several of his greatest influences, including Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey. According to The Hollywood Reporter, negotiations for this project have been underway for months and, befitting a Nolan enterprise, the deal is incredibly convoluted.