The skinny is, there is no news. No script, no casting, nothing. Batman 3, or The Dark Knight sequel, however you wish to refer to it, will not be made before 2011. Though he did rule out Johnny Depp.

“There is nobody, there’s no script, there’s nothing. […] It can’t possibly be made before 2011 because ‘Inception’ is such a big picture.”

[…]

“Johnny Depp is great in anything, but there is no Johnny Depp in this Batman. They tell me in no uncertain terms.”

Just to provide you with a bit of context for The Dark Knight sequel, Warner Bros. have announced that Chris Nolan’s next movie, “Inception”, will be released on July 26th 2010. This falls in direct competition with Marvel’s Thor movie.

As expected, and in following the Batman Begins to The Dark Knight journey, Christopher Nolan is taking some time out from Batman to pursue another movie – “Inception”. Do not fret, The Prestige was filmed between the first two Batman movies and this certainly does not rule Nolan out from a third movie. What’s more, Warner Bros. are producing “Inception”, keeping everyone happy.

“Inception” is billed as “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind”, with an original screenplay by Nolan it plans to begin shooting this summer with a summer 2010 release in mind.

Bearing this news in mind, the earliest point at which production on The Dark Knight sequel might begin is Summer 2010, and with production taking approximately 14 months it could be late 2011 or Summer 2012 before the caped crusader returns to theaters.

New Jersey’s Courier Post spoke to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight executive producer Michael Uslan. He expects the third Chris Nolan Batman movie to make an appearance in 2011. This seems logical to us, following a similar time frame as Begins to Knight – it gives the creative team a chance to flesh out some ideas whilst allowing Nolan to have a break from the franchise for a year or so, perhaps to work on other projects (such as The Prestige).

Uslan will be onboard as executive producer for the “Dark Knight” sequel, which he estimates will be [in] theaters by 2011. As for the identity of the next round of Batman’s supervillains and love interests, Uslan remains tight-lipped. “It’s one of those deals where if I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he says with a chuckle.

From MTV:

“I think Harvey — if he’s not dead — is in a serious coma,” stated Eckhart, “and I’m not sure he’s coming out. They might pull the plug on him.” Seemingly firm words, right? Except even the notion that his alter-ego is still alive is a clear departure from previous statements where the actor was perfectly fine confirming Harvey’s death at the business end of a freefalling drop.

We know from our recent interview with producer Charles Roven that screenwriters Christopher Nolan and David Goyer have begun brainstorming ideas for a third “Batman” film…could something out of that have led to Eckhart’s about-face on Two-Face? His wink-wink-nod-nod answer seems to suggest that something else may be at play.

Are MTV clutching at straws here?

Seems like the tabloids are at it again, this time with rumors that Rachel Weisz will be playing Cat Woman, Shia LaBoeuf to play Robin and Eddie Murphy as The Riddler – where do they get this crap? Suffice to say, it’s all made up drivel.

Time to get some real voices on the sequel to The Dark Knight; Alan Horn, president of Warner Bros. has recently spoken with Collider:

We’ve been talking to Chris Nolan and what we have to do is get him in the right place and have him tell us what he thinks the notion might be for a great story, but Chris did a great job and we’d love to have him come back and do another one.”

As far as the timing of the project, he went onto say: “The story is everything and we are very respectful of Chris. We have a wonderful relationship with him and we are going to be respectful of his timing and we want to get it right. Also, I think the fans expect that – they want us to make a terrific movie – we have to give them another great movie.“

Christopher Nolan has been speaking with USA Today about the success of The Dark Knight and its potential sequel:

Nolan says he is jotting notes and doing some rough outlines for a third story, but he hasn’t yet found anything he’s willing to commit to film, despite Warner Bros.’ eagerness to get a new film underway.

“It was obvious when the box office was so big ($530 million domestically) that we had underestimated how ready fans were to reboot the franchise,” he says. “The worst thing you could do now that you’ve gotten the plane back in the air is mess up the landing.”

[Talking about sequels and a third movie] “I don’t know why they’re hard to do,” Nolan says. “Maybe there’s so much expectation to them. But I wouldn’t want to do one if it weren’t going to be as good as the first or second. That’s not respectful to the fans.”

Nolan also points out his reasons for not putting outtakes or deleted scenes on the DVD – not a single extra scene involving The Joker:

Nolan says he wasn’t keeping deleted scenes from fans. “For my past three films, I really haven’t had scenes that didn’t make it in the movie,” he says. “If it’s in the final script, I tend put it on screen.”

Any outtakes, however, were intentionally left off the DVD. “I don’t like outtakes or gag reels,” Nolan says. “I don’t think it’s respectful to the actors, who signed on to have their performance on screen, not the takes that didn’t work out. It discourages actors from going all-out if they think every mistake is going on the disc.”

This report comes from All Things Fan Girl via AICN and details the main points from the talk, covering the Blu ray, BD-Live, a live Chris Nolan commentary on Dec 18th, the continuation of the Batman story (e.g. the third movie), lack of a directors cut and shooting an entire movie in IMAX, with workarounds for the noisiness of the camera.

This is a very good read..

Went to the Dark Knight Blu Ray release event with Chris Nolan last night.

Before tonight I had never even HEARD of BD Live. Apparently it’s Xbox Live for Blu-Ray? If you have a BD Live enabled Blu Ray player or a PS3, then you can connect to the internet and partake in the potential awesomeness. The Dark Knight is Warner Brothers’ first foray into this format and it’s shaping up to be reason alone to invest in a Blu-Ray Player.

First of all, it comes with tons of content, waiting to be streamed for free- the newest Warner’s trailers, episodes of Warner Premiere Motion Comics (Mad Love! Shadow of Ra’s al Ghul!) and more. And because everything is streaming, you can get to the content faster and it doesn’t take up any hard drive space. One of my favorite features of TDK BD Live is the commentary option. With a computer & webcam, you can record YOURSELF giving commentary for the whole movie or just a scene here, a scene there. Then, when people go on BD Live, they can select your commentary to watch with the film. Now, it’s doubtful that I would ever watch a stranger’s commentary, but a friend’s? Certainly. Maybe even someone famous? A blogger, a writer, a director, an actor, a critic, a technician – people not involved with the film who would have no business doing commentary for the dvd, but would have an interesting perspective, making their thoughts available to the general public? Yes, I’m into that.

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