Warner Bros appears to have finally made a decision as to which direction to take its Superman movie franchise, which has remained stagnant since Bryan Singer's 2006 reboot, Superman Returns.

In the aftermath of that film, Singer had originally talked about "going all Wrath of Khan" on a sequel, but it became increasingly clear that Warner Bros wasn't happy with his first attempt at bringing the Man Of Steel to the big screen, and thus wasn't likely to give him the controls again. Since then, we've have stories linking the likes of Mark Millar to the franchise, but nothing has come of it. It didn't help that Superman itself got caught up in legal mire, and the end result was that the franchise was in limbo.

But Warner Bros, according to a report at Deadline Hollywood, could just have had a bit of a brainwave. For it's reported that the studio has approached Christopher Nolan to oversee a fresh reboot of sorts to Superman, and to take what's being described as a "godfather" role over the new film. There's no suggestion that Nolan is going to direct, but it is clear that this won't be a follow-up to Superman Returns. The franchise is definitely going off in a fresh direction.

Deadline Hollywood notes that the project is still in the very early stages of development, but this is the first signs of life out of the Superman franchise in some time. Plus, it's not lost on most that Nolan has delivered some of the smartest and ambitious blockbusters of the last decade, and arguably, the best comic book movie too, in the shape of The Dark Knight. Given how well he rebooted the Batman franchise, it seems like a very smart move, with the side effect being that it ties one of Hollywood's most in-demand directors to Warner Bros for the foreseeable future (he's just finishing off his latest project for the studio, Inception, which is heading to cinemas in the summer).

There does appear to be a clock on the Superman project, given the legal challenges to the Man Of Steel rights from the heirs and estates of original creators Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster. As Deadline Hollywood notes, attorney Marc Toberoff has been warning that after 2013 - when he contends the rights will revert back to Siegel and Shuster - "neither DC Comics nor Warner Bros will be able to exploit any new Superman works without a license from the Siegels and Shusters". Furthermore, if Warner Bros doesn't move a film into production by 2011, "the Siegels could sue to recover their damages on the grounds that the deal should have contained a clause in which the rights returned to the owners after a given time if no film was in development".

To clarify: the current state of the rights to Superman is that Siegel's heirs own half the copyright already, with the Shuster estate getting the other half in 2013. Hence, it makes sense for Warner Bros to get cracking sooner rather than later, and then to reach some kind of peace over the rights that would allow it to exploit the Superman property going into the future.

Nolan's job will be to make that viable. It's unclear at this stage what his plans for the franchise are, and what direction he seeks to take things. There's not yet even been formal confirmation of his involvement, from what we can tell.

But right now, there's still the general impression that Warner Bros has made a smart choice, should it prove to be correct, and must be sorely wishing it could clone the man. As things stand, Nolan is reported to have come up with a story for a next Batman project - which David Goyer and Jonathan Nolan are turning into a screenplay - and that may make it more likely that he'll be returning to the Bat-chair after all. But the studio must be wishing that Nolan could direct Superman as well. As we said, it's very unlikely to happen, but at the very least, it feels as though Warner Bros has taken a sensible step forward...

There's more on this story in the excellent Deadline Hollywood piece here.