'Tenet' trailer: Christopher Nolan's back with his time shenanigans in international spy epic

The first trailer of Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" has dropped and it seems the ace filmmaker is fiddling with time once again.

The film is being billed as a globetrotting game of international espionage and features a star-studded cast of John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh and Clemence Poesy.

The trailer, which studio Warner Bros shared on the social media on Thursday, opens with Washington and Pattinson scaling up a building.

In a later shot, Washington, who as per Nolan is the hero of the film, is then welcomed into group called "Afterlife" that is trying to prevent the "World War III".

And this threat is much worse than the nuclear holocaust.

"All I have for you is Tenet," says the man who welcomed Washington as he is trying to understand the nature of the game he is getting into.

The trailer then gives a glimpse of Debicki as well as Nolan's former collaborators -- Caine and Branagh, who seems to be playing the villain.

Kapadia makes a brief appearance in the trailer as she advices Washington about the nature of the game is he a part of.

"You have to start looking at the world in a new way," the veteran actor says.

But perhaps the most mind-bending scene is the one involving a car chase sequence - a car crashes only to rewind until it lands back on the road without a scratch, leaving Washington and Pattinson absolutely stunned.

"Don't try to understand it. Feel it," Poesy says in the background.

To top it all, in the concluding scene, Washington and Pattinson enter a room to investigate a glass window riddled with bullets.

"What the hell happened here?" Pattinson asks. "It hasn't happened yet," Washington replies as an armed man appears to fall backwards out of a nearby room.

It could easily be considered as the third part in Nolan's time-bending series after "Memento" and "Inception", though his play with the clock is quite visible in his other movies as well, most recently in "Dunkirk".

"Tenet" reunites the filmmaker with his "Interstellar" and "Dunkirk" cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema.

He is partnering with Oscar-winning "Black Panther" composer Ludwig Goransson for the film's score, rather than Hans Zimmer, his music composer of many years.

"Tenet" will release worldwide on July 17, 2020.