I'm not even sure why anyone thought otherwise but
Aaron Eckhart, not for the first time mind you, has
confirmed to MTV that he WON'T be in
The Dark Knight Rises.
Chris and I had a meeting, on the beach, just the two of us, Eckhart said. I said, Chris, a lot of people are asking me if Im in the next Batman. And Chris said, Yes? I said, Am I? He looked at me and he said, No.
What's more interesting from the quote above is the fact Chris and Aaron had a meeting, I suppose. Is it just semantics and Eckhart should have more accurately said he had a 'chat, meet-up, hung out' with Chris, especially with it being a beach setting - because the word 'meeting' immediately makes you think of business, and future roles. They probably weren't talking about a post-The Dark Knight Rises film, but they might have been.
The second piece of news I don't want to spend much time on but once again,
I'm not sure why anyone thought otherwise, but producer
Emma Thomas has confirmed The Joker won't be a part of the new film, either as a CGI Brando-esque
Heath Ledger or not. Can we please, for once and for all, put that to an end now please? You Joker-fanatics will get more of the character on film before the decade is done, I'm convinced. They'll reboot Batman most likely after Nolan is finished so just be-careful what you wish for. The more interesting piece of news this week is that Nolan had originally planned for Heath Ledger's The Joker to appear in the new movie in a Hannibal Lecter style
Silence of the Lambs prison cameo but dropped the idea when the actor tragically passed away.
This is something
I've liked the sound of for a very long time and it doesn't surprise me in the least that was Nolan's initial intention. What does surprise me is that
Nolan wouldn't re-cast Ledger for the cameo, which I think was a mistake but anyway - he must at least mention the status of The Joker in the new movie by a line of dialogue or news piece or something. And finally....
Harry Knowles at AICN is just about catching up with the rest of us - his 'insider' sources are telling him the new movie will be based on
Doug Moench's early 90's storyline Prey. That's a story that hit last month and certainly seems to tick all the boxes and makes sense. Here's what I wrote last month;
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 by Gordon (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). The other two major characters in this storyline are mad psychiatrist Dr. Hugo Strange (who works closely with the police force to try and fathom out Batmans identity but is clearly working on his own agenda as Bats is a personal fascination for him and he is the one who hypnotizes Cort to go evil) and frequent cameos from Catwoman.
In the comments section of his site, Harry claims he didn't read this story as it hit last month but says "
I was shown 'proof' in a manner of speaking that convinced me to go with this". What proof, he doesn't say. Harry's siding with the idea that
Tom Hardy will be playing Dr. Hugo Strange, but I think he's more likely to play Sgt. Cort or a Cort-esque figure. Either character though I'd love to see Hardy take a crack at when filming begins in the late Spring/early Summer of 2011.