With good reason, it seems that everyone just assumes that Nolan will be sitting in the comfy chair for Batman 3, but as it seems the third chapter of this wildly popular take on Batman will be a ways off in the distance. Like 4 more years away.
And it may not have Nolan on board.
FIRST: That the death of Heath Ledger rocked Chris Nolan so much to the core that he was convinced in the months leading up to the release of The Dark Knight that he was done with this series and wouldn’t return for a third movie. The original plan was to include The Joker in the third movie, but the source doesn’t indicate whether this was before Heath Ledger’s death.
TWO: The earliest of all estimates have Batman 3 scheduled for the summer of 2013, which is four years away. It could easily be longer than that.
THREE: There is no story currently outlined for Batman 3. They are truly at square one at this point in time.
With last year’s outstanding success of the Dark Knight, you would think Nolan would be plotting out the sequel while walking down the red carpet for the premier. As rumours for a third Batman began to circuluate, we were reminded that Nolan hadn’t written anything so it was all speculation.
And nearly a year later he still hasn’t.
Granted he is pretty busy with this new project (which isn’t Batman even if I wish it was a ruse) so no one expected him to be writing Batman 3. And maybe he never will.
With WB wanting to run back to the money truck for another armload, they are not likely to wait for Nolan. Yes, he hit it out of the park with the first two, so there is no reason to think he can’t again. We all want him to. Doesn’t mean he will.
And the WB has kept a close eye on Zack Snyder as his replacement. Sure, there will be a lot of “but he isn’t the lord and saviour of film as we know it” but he could be a good fit for Batman. 300 was so staggeringly faithful to the graphic novel that it found its success, and while Watchmen was faithful as well, it didn’t share in the same acclaim as 300. But his gift seems to be in staying true to the source materials, and if he is brought in to sequel Nolan’s work and remains faithful to the style and tone, I wouldn’t mind him as a director.
You don’t need the “best” director, you just need the RIGHT director.
My biggest concern with Snyder (should it come to pass) is that he is determined to NOT do a Nolan sequel, but rather adapt the Dark Knight Returns graphic novel series, which features a much older grittier war torn Batman coming out of retirement. As much as I like the miniseries, I don’t want to see the franchise abandon the current path to skip ahead to a future story.
So we hang in limbo waiting to see if Nolan commits, what timeline that provides and where Batman goes from here.
