ScriptFlags.com reported over the weekend that a 'PR person' involved with
The Dark Knight Rises spilled to them that
Chris Nolan's third Batman movie will be based on the
Prey storyline by Doug Moench that ran through issues #11-15 of Legends of The Dark Knight in the early 90's. Now putting aside the utter lunacy in reporting that a PR person would effectively make he/herself redundant by telling a website I have barely heard of the absolute scoop of the moment, the logic behind the movie being based on Prey isn't all that insane.
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.
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 Batman's 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 cameo's from
Catwoman - the latter of which
might explain that female lead casting. Now don't get all excited and rush out and buy a copy of Batman Prey thinking it'll be a page-by-page redo of that storyline. If Nolan is to use Prey (which remember - this isn't a scoop... just pure speculation) it would probably just be an inspiration to the story like Year One was to
Batman Begins or The Long Halloween to
The Dark Knight. The plot further thickens by Aussie actress
Teresa Palmer, who was previously cast as Talia Al Ghul in that ill-advised
JLA movie a few years back and who has told
MovieWeb she is campaining to win the same role this time around. Does she know something we don't? Probably not - BUT - I like the idea of having Talia involved, possibly the one funding Strange's research against Bats?
To be clear then - a PR person won't know what's going on (you can count the number of people who actually know the storyline of Batman 3 on the one hand, probably) and they certainly won't go telling websites... but whomever has made the fairly logical stab in the dark (which is all it is) that Prey could be involved, isn't the craziest of suggestions.