The Christopher Nolan-directed World War II drama Dunkirk is topping social media buzz, shortly before its theatrical release this month. Nolan's latest film will cinematically reimagine the historic Dunkirk evacuation of 1940, wherein Allied forces were rescued from the eponymous Nazi-occupied French beaches and harbor - most crucially by land, air, and sea.

Early buzz around Dunkirk is positive ahead of its release, with the film being praises as a masterfully-crafted thrill ride, featuring starring turns by Harry Styles, Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, and Mark Rylance. Although Dunkirk is currently projected to open lower at the box office than Nolan's last film (2014's Interstellar), that may yet change - given that the film is currently the top-trending move tropic on social media sites.

According to Variety, Dunkirk generated 140,000 new conversations on social media last week -  bringing it to a total of 1.09 million conversations to date - according to media-measurement firm ComScore. Comparatively, The Emoji Movie recently garnered an additional 18,000 conversations over the same period of time. Meanwhile, Avengers: Infinity War generated 15,500 conversations and the Luc Besson directed sci-fi epic Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (which opens the same day as Dunkirk) is trailing at the back of the pack with 15,000 conversations.

Dunkirk is currently on track for a $40 million opening at the U.S. box office and will receive the widest 70mm modern format theatrical release for any commercial production in 25 years, in addition to marking the big screen debut of Harry Styles as a lead actor. For those reasons alone, it's fair to assume that Nolan fans the world would turn out to theaters to see the new movie regardless of whether or not social media statistics confirmed as much. That the latter is the case anyway, suggests that Dunkirk may yet significantly exceed its current box office projections.

Nolan has rarely disappointed fans in the past, and with Dunkirk the popularly celebrated auteur who brought The Dark Knight trilogy to life on the big screen seems to have another crowdpleaser up his sleeves - one that his longtime fans should be more than happy to check out, during its opening weekend. As such, any and all hardcore film buffs who aren't busy attending San Diego Comic-Con the weekend after this next one (at the time of writing this), may instead be heading to their local theater to watch Nolan take on WWII instead.

NEXT: Why Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk is So Short

Source: Variety

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