Chris Nolan talks SUPERMAN & BATMAN 3 – A lot!!!
Finally, someone got Chris Nolan to talk! Good old Geoff Boucher at the L.A. Times - just about the only guy the mysterious Nolan speaks to these days and I guess this will have to keep us going until Inception is released this summer. Still there's alot to chew on, including the first official quotes on his Superman take, so let's get straight to it. First up, Nolan confirms he is the "Godfather" of the new Superman reboot;
Its very exciting, we have a fantastic story... And we feel we can do it right. We know the milieu, if you will, we know the genre and how to get it done right.He goes on to confirm that David Goyer, his Batman Begins scribe is writing the screenplay for The Man of Steel right now...
Were approaching it... in terms of trying to find an incredible story in a way that audiences can engage with it the way they engage with contemporary action films...I think Davids approach is a very good way of doing just that.MUCH MUCH MORE ON SUPERMAN & BATMAN 3 - including who is writing what, and which major villain won't appear in what sounds like the end of Nolan's Bat-story... Goyer is actually the man responsible for the whole thing coming together. Nolan says Goyer approached him with an idea for a new Superman epic during a writer's block phase on Batman 3, at a time when he was struggling to come up with a new direction for the Caped Crusader...
He basically told me, I have this thought about how you would approach Superman'... I immediately got it, loved it and thought: That is a way of approaching the story Ive never seen before that makes it incredibly exciting. I wanted to get Emma and I involved in shepherding the project right away and getting it to the studio and getting it going in an exciting way.Emma, being his producer/wife Emma Thomas, who has worked with Nolan on his whole filmography to date. So we know they have a story, we know Goyer is busy writing it as we speak (which cost him his job on Flashforward earlier this year) but wild claims the movie will feature Lex Luthor and Brainiac as the villains just aren't true. Says Thomas;
I dont know where this stuff comes from,Nolan wouldn't say who he has his eye on directing The Man of Steel but I would say it's foolish to rule out any of the trio who brought
us the Batman series at this stage - i.e. Nolan, Nolan & Goyer. However with a 2013 release date likely, in all honesty it seems improbable Chris Nolan could fit it in. Boucher believes Nolan is in the same situation as Peter Jackson when he tried to shepherd Neil Blomkamp with a Halo adaptation, and later District 9; and also similar to what Jackson is doing with Guillermo del Toro over The Hobbit. And just so it's on the record - if Blomkamp was hired - OWF would support that choice to the hilt. So what of Batman 3 - Well Nolan won't confirm with quotes to say he will direct but he said enough for reporter Boucher to say "he is", and come on, let's face - it's almost certain he will. Right now, Nolan says his brother Jonathan is "now doing the hard work" of shaping up the screenplay based on a story developed by Chris and Goyer. My brother is writing a script for me and well wait to see how it turns out...hes struggling to put it together into the epic story that you want it to be... We have a great ensemble , thats one of the attractions of doing another film, since weve been having a great time for years.Don't take the "struggling" comment that literally. Jonah Nolan is a storytelling genius; he wrote the scripts for The Prestige and The Dark Knight, he will crack it eventually. Personally, I would expect confirmation to come via an official Warner Bros. announcement this summer along with a title, and a Spring 2011 shooting start.
Filming on what very much sounds like Nolan's last Batman movie, the end of his trilogy... Without getting into specifics, the key thing that makes the third film an great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story... And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story.He continues;
Im very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what weve done with the characters... My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff. Unlike the comics, these things dont go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful. Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale were telling. And it hearkens back to that priority of trying to find the reality in these fantastic stories. Thats what we do.Nolan refuses to tell us which villain it will be, but he does one it won't;
It wont be," he said, "Mr. Freeze.One thing that was brought up as soon as Nolan came on board by anxious fanboys was the potential of a Batman/Superman team-up. Of course as Nolan has said before, that just ain't gonna happen on his watch...
A lot of people have approached Superman in a lot of different ways. I only know the way that has worked for us thats what I know how to do...Each serves to the internal logic of the story. They have nothing to do with each other.You can read the full Chris Nolan L.A. Times story HERE.