Inception is a 2010 British-American science fiction action heist film which was written, co-produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan. The film features an international ensemble cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, and Michael Caine. DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a specialized corporate spy and thief whose work consists of secretly extracting valuable commercial information from the unconscious minds of his targets while they dream. Wanted for murder and unable to visit his children, Cobb is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "Inception", the implantation of an original idea into a target's subconscious. In 2001, Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about "dream stealers", and presented the idea to Warner Bros. in a story envisioned as a horror film inspired by lucid dreaming. Feeling he needed to have more experience with large-scale film production, Nolan retired the project and instead worked on Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008).