Gary Oldman's been spilling about The Dark Knight Rises again and either he's got himself confused about the franchise (come on... Oldman's not like us, he doesn't really care about Bat's history & continuity in comics, he just wants to make good movies) or he's just thrown a huge spanner in our Batman-villain prognostication game. Speaking to E at the red carpet premiere of Red Riding Hood, Oldman revealed regarding the main baddie of his third Batman movie...
I think its a villain from one of the old, old, from way back from the old comics It is a Batman villain Its not going to be the Joker.
Hmmm... interesting. We debate below... Ok... so the one villain we know that is 100% confirmed so far for The Dark Knight Rises is Tom Hardy as Bane, a villain created in the 90's. So Oldman can't be referring to him. All the signs point to an appearance from Talia Ah Ghul, but she originates in 1971 and Batman was created in the 40's. So not her. So unless Oldman is talking about Anne Hathaway's Catwoman (spring of 1940), which I don't think he is because Oldman went on to say - "If I told you who the villain was, they'd kill me" and then about Hathaway - "I think she'll probably wear the cat suit pretty well, don't you?"... which contradicts himself about keeping quiet. So not her either. Then, we can only presume, he must be talking about another Bob Kane era villain and with Joseph Gordon-Levitt's role in the movie not yet revealed, perhaps it's his mysterious part that Oldman knows about. Levitt's been long-time rumoured to play Black Mask (1985) but also Dr. Hugo Strange! Now interestingly, Strange debuted way back in Detective Comics #36 in February 1940, a character that even predates The Joker! The Penguin debuted in 1941 and The Riddler a little later in 1948 - though Chris Nolan has poured cold water over both, which might turn out to be a clever bit of misdirection if either of those actually appear in the new film in a major way. Interesting....