Internet movie websites (yes, including The Movie Blog sometimes) are occasionally prone to jump all over wild unfounded rumors and start repeating them as facts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse case of this than with anything regarding the new Batman Franchise.
Just 3 months ago it was flying all over the web that Johnny Depp And Philip Seymour Hoffman were joining the next Batman film as the Riddler and The Penguin respectively. Sounds like great casting doesn’t it? Yeah well… the only problem is that at that point Christopher Nolan hadn’t even signed on to do another Batman film, nor had he written one page of script for another movie let alone decided who the villains would be… never mind WHO would play those villains. You can see my original response to those rumors here.
Soon after those rumors got debunked, more rumors surfaced… then more… then more. Everything from Angelina Jolie being Catwoman to Anthony Hopkins replacing Michael Caine as Alfred. NONSENSE!!!
Look… don’t believe ANY Batman rumors you hear for at least 4 or 6 more months. Warner Bros president Alan Horn has come out in a recent interview and basically said there is NOTHING going on with the new Batman movie yet. NOTHING.
The folks over at Movieweb give us Horn’s words here:
“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.”
The site asked him if they would try to rush this film into production, and Horn said they were giving Nolan the time to develop the story.
“Yes. 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.”
So if you see another big rumor online relating to the next Batman film… just ignore it.
