The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan is making one giant leap out into space this fall with Interstellar, a sci-fi drama about a group of explorers who make the push into interstellar travel through a wormhole as Earth nears the stage of no longer being habitable. Led by Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a man who is forced to leave his family behind as he embarks on the journey, the intrepid crew also includes Wes Bentley, Anne Hathaway and David Gyasi.

Interstellar is easily one of the most highly anticipated releases still to come this year, and with Nolan already having established himself as a strong player in the science fiction genre with 2010's Inception, Interstellar could be the movie that solidifies his reputation as a gifted wrangler of high-minded sci-fi concepts.

It might also be the first Nolan movie to require an intermission at all screenings, as The Film Stage reports that Interstellar's running time is a staggering 169 minutes, making it Nolan's longest film to date. The director may well need all that extra room, though; in an interview with Empire, Nolan described Interstellar as being "almost a mirror image of Inception. It expands out in the way Inception contracts inwards." The November issue of Empire includes a more extended interview with Nolan, as well as several new stills from Interstellar that you can check out below.

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The posters for Interstellar feature McConaughey and co. in a variety of different environments, including the drought-ridden desert of Earth, in the middle of an ocean, in a barren snow-covered wasteland and out in the far-flung reaches of space. Given the practicalities of (theorized) interstellar travel, it wouldn't be surprising if Cooper comes back from his outer space adventures to find that more time has passed on Earth than he has personally experienced. Or perhaps he won't get to come home at all.

Nolan seems to have taken a lot of care to keep the movie grounded by the story of Earth and, on a more personal level, Cooper's family (Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck are speculated to be playing older versions of his kids). Considering the explorers' main motivation is to try and find a new home for humanity, it makes sense to maintain a strong reminder of what's at stake for the individual characters, as well as for the species as a whole.

Interstellar opens in U.S. theaters on November 7th, 2014.

Source: The Film Stage, Empire (via CBM)