Four names as illustrious as those practically demand that the new movie have a top-tier blockbuster director, and that's apparently just what the studio is looking for. Christopher Nolan is, of course, the Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and Inception mastermind currently filming The Dark Knight Rises for the studio, which has produced all of his films since Insomnia. Alfonso Cuaron, who previously directed the masterful Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men, also has a relationship with the WB, having helmed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He's now finishing up his long-in-gestation Gravity for the studio and hasn't yet settled on a follow-up.
Speaking of Harry Potter, David Yates, the man behind the last four installments in the franchise, was also a possibility at some point, but it seems he's more or less out of the running, perhaps because of The Stand, the Stephen King adaptation he's developing with Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves.
Michael Bay, a polarizing auteur if ever there was one, most recently directed Transformers: Dark of the Moon, has never worked with Warner Bros before, and he's publicly stated that, after three jumbo-sized Transformers movies, his next film will be the lower-budget dark comedy Pain & Gain. Rupert Wyatt, described as the dark horse on the list, recently hopped to the big time with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which rather unexpectedly earned $400 million dollars globally this summer. He has expressed interest in directing a sequel to that loose prequel, but 20th Century Fox has yet to make any moves to make that happen.
Rand Ravich and Jason Rothenberg wrote the top secret The Twilight Zone screenplay, and Leonardo DiCaprio is producing through his Appian Way banner.
