A vaguely named “PR Person” spilled recently that Nolan’s third Batman film The Dark Knight Rises will be based on a story arc from the early 90s called Prey.
Let’s look at the facts of Prey….
1) The comic is set in the early timeline of Batman’s career, a post-Year One storyline that fits in with the Nolan universe.
2) The plot of Prey fits in very well with how The Dark Knight ended, scarily so in fact. The Mayor Of Gotham assigns a new police task force to arrest Batman which is headed byGordon (who is secretly sabotaging the whole thing) and involves an ambitious, loose-cannon, overly thuggish young cop known as Sgt. Max Cort (who has the bug up his ass about Batman).
As we’ve mentioned already in relation to Harvey Bullock – a Melvin Purvis/Public Enemies-esque cop chasing the heels of The Caped Crusader and quickly gaining the trust of the Gotham Police Force over Gordon makes for a fitting role for the already cast Tom Hardy in the new movie. Using Cort (Or a fictional name) and this archetype character seems to fit, and we would expect that Nolan would drop the fact he becomes an avenging ninja known as ‘Night Scourge’ later in the storyline. Maybe he would become a bad guy… but nothing like.
It is a logical speculation that this story arc could be the basis of The Dark Knight Rises, but not suggesting it be a page for page adaptation.
Also, Catwoman makes a number of appearances in the story arc and fan speculation has the mysterious female casting for that character. Also while Nolan is unlikely to use Night Scourge (dumb villain name) he may fill the purpose of that role with the other mysterious female casting as Talia Al Ghul.
Of course this is all just wild speculation, as no one really knows what’s going on just yet. But its interesting to see the parallel.