Chris Nolan wants to go deeper. Deeper into the world of trans-media crossover intellectual properties, anyway, having seen his comments to a press conference for his film Inception in Rome.
Variety reports the director as saying: “We are looking at developing a videogame based on the world of the film, which has all kinds of ideas that you can't fit into a feature film.” He's non-committal on the timelines, but the way them Hollywood types work, you can bet someone's locked him down to a deal a few years hence. They're all the same, them Hollywood types. Yeah, I'm talking to you, in your suit and...stuff.
Be fair to Chris though, Inception lines itself up beautifully as a game. Mild spoilers for anyone yet to see the film: as soon as the camera goes inside the central, multi-stage quadra-dream, we're into a traditional level structure. It even manages to sidestep the traditional narrative reaches that developers use to show natural progression: there's no need for a connecting sewer level between two maps, you can just press the big red 'NEW DREAM!' button.
The time constraints the director mentioned only let us see a few possible worlds in-movie, but each one can be mentally ported to a game: the first level chase scene, the mountainside shootout, the close-quarters hotel rumble. The film shows that brain-invading parties get counter-attacked by the mentally prepared, gun-toting projections, providing a cheap and guilt-free source of killable meat to shoot with your dream-guns.
Whether Nolan could lock down quite so many disparate genres and mechanics into one game is an entirely separate matter, but fingers crossed some auteur developer will get involved and make the project their own.
