There’s much expectation for Rian Johnson’s next film, Looper, which will reunite the director with his Brick lead, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

At the time of the casting news above there was only a few details known about the plot, its time travel with hitmen concept was interesting but now there’s a little more meat on the bones.

Cinematical (via our friends at /Film) spoke to the director who cleared up a few inconsistencies and let loose with a brief synopsis.

Looper is a time travel movie, set in a near future where time travel doesn’t exist but will be invented in a few decades. It’s pretty dark in tone, much different from Bloom, and involves a group of killers (called Loopers) who work for a crime syndicate in the future. Their bosses send their targets hogtied and blindfolded back in time to the Loopers, and their job is to simply shoot them in the head and dispose of the body. So the target vanishes from the future and the Loopers dispose of a corpse that doesn’t technically exist, a very clean system. Complications set in from there.

I can’t wait to make it, I’m a big sci-fi fan and it’s going to be a fun world to play in. Fingers crossed.

Following his high-school film noir, Brick with the beautiful Brothers Bloom, the move to sci-fi is the perfect next step for Johnson, whose focus on characters wrapped up in twisted plots is a breath of fresh air in the current climate of CG infused one note narratives.

Check out the interview with Johnson at the Cinematical link above to find out more about his writing process and the wonder that is The Brothers Bloom, which is due out in the UK (finally) at the start of June.