Even if his last movie hadn't just won Best Picture, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's next effort would be one of our most anticipated of the year. Titled The Revenant, it's another collaboration between the writer-director and his Birdman cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki (both of whom also received Oscars this year for that movie). And judging by a bunch of new images just released from the period drama [via Yahoo], it definitely looks like another visual winner. Here's all you need to know about the feature, plus those latest stills:

The Revenant is based on a novel but also a true story

Inarritu and Vacancy scribe Mark L. Smith loosely adapted Michael Punke's 2002 novel The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge, which itself is loosely based on the life of Hugh Glass, a real-life explorer, fur trapper and frontier folk hero. The movie takes place in the Dakotas in 1823.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass

The movie, like the book, depicts the famed incident of Glass (aged about 43 at the time) being mauled by a grizzly bear, from which he had to survive on his own after two men in his expedition ran off with his equipment and left him for dead, and his revenge on those men. Based on the image above, he apparently has a romance with a Native American woman, played by Grace Dove Syme.

Tom Hardy and Will Poulter play the men who betray Glass

Hardy portrays John Fitzgerald (aged 23) and Poulter portrays Jim Bridger (aged 19), those men who volunteered to stay with Glass until he died from the bear attack and then bury him -- but who robbed him instead. They claimed to have actually been fleeing an attack from Arikara Indians. 

Domhnall Gleeson plays Major Andrew Henry

Henry was the leader of the men in the trapping expedition, and he put in the order for the two men to stay behind with Glass, offering them bonuses for the service. When Fitzgerald and Bridger met back up with the group, long after expected, they told Henry that Glass had finally died.

Wasn't there already a movie about Hugh Glass?

Yes, the 1971 Western Man in the Wilderness starred Richard Harris as a fictionalized Glass named Zachary Bass with John Huston portraying the real-life Henry (as Captain Henry, not Major). Before that, there was a 1966 episode of the Western anthology TV series Death Valley Days depicting the story with John Alderson playing Glass, Morgan Woodward (Cool Hand Luke) as Fitzgerald, Carl Reindel as Bridger, and Tristram Coffin as Henry.

The Revenant opens in limited release on December 25, 2015

The Christmas release date will give the movie proper Oscar qualification, though most of the country won't be able to see it until it goes wide in January.