Is Christopher Nolan Involved With An AKIRA Trilogy at WB?

If you've been following movie news for a while, you're probably very familiar with the seemingly doomed live-action film adaptation of Akira, the classic manga and anime that Warner Bros. has been trying to make for over ten years. People like Keanu Reeves, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Franco, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, and Toby Kebbell have been up for starring roles at various times, and the studio has put a ton of effort into trying to find the right filmmaker for the job, with Jaume Collet-Serra (Non-Stop) being the latest director to fall off of the project.

Den of Geek has an extremely interesting rumor from a source close to Warner Bros. that the studio is now planning on turning their adaptation of Akira into a trilogy, and that Christopher Nolan has met with "a previously-attached filmmaker" in the past three months to discuss the project. So let's break this down piece by piece:

1. WB's apparently making it a trilogy now. I'm guessing fans of the original manga will find this news satisfying. I've only seen the anime and I'm not familiar with the source material so I don't know what was omitted from that version of the story, so I don't have any thoughts other than it's obvious any studio would try to build a franchise out of this property if they have the rights to it.

2. Nolan is reportedly involved, meeting with a director who was previously attached to the project. That could mean a number of people at this point, including Collet-Serra, the Hughes Brothers, Blade director Stephen Norrington, and probably more. But in what capacity is he talking about the movie with this person? There seem to be two options:

3. The first, and probably least likely, option is that Nolan himself is directing at least one of these Akira movies. He just announced his newest mystery film for release in the summer of 2017, so perhaps it's the first entry into this new saga. But again, that seems unlikely if only because Nolan spent the better part of the last ten years directing a different trilogy. Still, the fact that Inception star DiCaprio's production company is producing the film and the fact that Nolan has strong ties to Warner Bros. may be more than a coincidence. The more likely option, though, is that Nolan is just producing (at least one movie in) this new trilogy, and is simply meeting with a previously-attached filmmaker to get up to speed about the inner workings of their development on the project. (Or I suppose he could be luring the filmmaker back to the director's chair, since Collet-Serra is reportedly no longer involved.)

The one thing we do know for certain after all of this is that Daredevil showrunner Marco J. Ramirez is writing the screenplay. The rest should be considered a rumor for now, but the possibilities are interesting to ponder. What do you think?