Anne Hathaway may reunite with director Christopher Nolan for Nolan's film 'Interstellar'

Anne Hathaway may be 'near a deal' to appear alongside Matthew McConaughey in the film 'Interstellar.' Anne Hathaway worked with Christopher Nolan on 'The Dark Knight Rises.'

Filmmaker Christopher Nolan worked alongside several of the same actors on his last two movies (Inception and The Dark Knight Rises), which includes his “good luck” charm Michael Caine – who’s appeared in every Nolan picture beginning with, uh… Batman Begins – and people such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy and Marion Cotillard.

It’s not surprising to learn that this practice of relying upon a trusted actor troop will continue (to some degree) with Nolan’s latest project Interstellar, but the news that Anne Hathaway is the first returning player to be announced does come as something of an unexpected, but very much welcome, revelation.

Deadline, which is the first to break this story, is reporting that Hathaway is “near a deal” to headline Interstellar alongside Matthew McConaughey, who confirmed his involvement a week ago. There’s no word yet on any other name actors or A-listers who are coming back to play in Nolan’s sandbox again; though, it’s probably a given that Caine will appear in some capacity (not at all a bad thing, mind you).

Interestingly, Hathaway was originally going to follow up her roles as Selina Kyle in Dark Knight Rises and Oscar-winning performance in the Les Misérables cinematic musical with the Robopocalypse adaptation from director Steven Spielberg – who had been lined up to direct from Jonathan Nolan’s Interstellar script back in 2006 – before that project was delayed at Spielberg’s request (for creative purposes), thus freeing up the actress to reunite with Nolan instead. No harm, no foul.

More importantly, the Interstellar leads are a good mixture of experience and fresh perspective, with regard to how they will collaborate with the same filmmaker who pioneered the modern approach to infusing blockbuster proceedings with a more personal and artistic flavor - which, previously, was reserved for smaller-scale and low-budget auteur undertakings, before Nolan changed the game with his Dark Knight trilogy and Inception success.

Chris Nolan has been revising his brother’s screenplay, so to make it better fit his traditional storytelling method and thematic emphasis. The under-wraps story involves wormholes and pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge, so you can already see the surface connection to the director’s previous work – be it his love for playing around with the concepts of time and space (often through editing), or interest in examining how ambition, drive and obsession can be very dangerous.

Those ideas are directly touched upon and closely examined in the Nolan brothers’ adaptation of The Prestige – and seeing how I’d be willing to argue that is one of the filmmakers’ best works (maybe even my personal favorite), that makes me all the more excited to see them plunge deeper into both shared dramatic elements and sci-fi philosophical implications previously left untouched, with Interstellar.

Sandy Schaefer blogs at Screen Rant.