Happy Holidays

One last bit of news, then I'm off for the rest of the year.

Kate Beckinsale is doing press for her upcoming movie Nothing But the Truth, and MTV.com was nice enough to ask her about Catwoman:

MTV: Specifically, I know you've talked about Wonder Woman a great deal, but is there a character you'd love to do? Catwoman in a Nolan-directed "Batman 3," for instance?

Beckinsale: Absolutely, that would be awesome. I'd love to do that. One of the things I've done wrong with my career is not have a massive game plan for it. I enjoy being surprised. I was very surprised to ever find myself even considered for an action movie. I'm like the literary, academic geek who's not very good at sports, so it was amazingly shocking that anyone would ever do that. I like to be surprised. Read the whole article here.

If you're looking for something entertaining while I'm gone, Comics Should Be Good is filling in the gaps in their Top 100 Comic Book Battles with quite a few Batman entries and I'm sure more to come.

(That's Catwoman, Huntress, and Black Canary, if you were wondering. Art by Ed Benes)

News & Notes

On the heels of more stupid rumors, various websites appear to be fed up with it.

• Totalfilm ran an article titlted McG to Direct Batman 3!:
  

  Speaking from the moon, McG said: "I went to Great England to seek Nolan's approval. He said that he knows how tough it is to follow a brilliant film, after his experiences on Memento 2: I Still Can't Remember Where I Put My Keys."

• Film School Rejects get the inside scoop straight from Christopher Nolan:
  

  Not only is it a guaranteed go, it’s going to be split into seven 4-hour movies, making the fourth installment a full 28-hours long. There are no rumors yet regarding the film, but expect an avalanche of them soon - including the fact that it will feature over a dozen villains, Alfred’s sex change, and Batman’s death at the hands of his own father who faked his death all those years ago and also happens to be a witch doctor.

• Ain't It Cool News skips the satire and just uses a lot of profanity:
  

  If ANY OF YOU believe any of this [BS], you have found some crazy awesome drugs and I would like to have some of what you're having.

Stupid Rumor of the Day

Seems like for every reasonable sounding casting rumor, there's at least one ridiculous one. So not long after the not too far fetched Rachel Weisz rumor, right on cue, the Sun comes up with one possibly dumber than Cher as Catwoman:

FUNNYMAN EDDIE MURPHY will play The Riddler in the next Batman movie, The Sun can reveal... The film, set for a 2010 release, is being developed under the working title Gotham. Execs have also signed up rising Transformers star SHIA LABEOUF, 22, to play Robin.

They even crudely photoshopped Eddie Murphy in a question mark jumpsuit. Please don't believe any of that for a second (although I wouldn't hate "Gotham" as a title). But since I've been putting up every casting rumor I come across, I don't want to start getting picky now.

I do like that the rumors are racially inclusive, though I'm a little surprised whoever made this up didn't go with Chris Tucker instead of Eddie Murphy. He's a lot closer to the Frank Gorshin/Jim Carrey Riddler that most people remember (note: I don't actually want Chris Tucker to play the Riddler). I bet Don Cheadle could play a great Riddler though.

News & Notes

• Original Sharp Says included the above fan-made poster in their article on Rachel Weisz/Catwoman rumor. It's very well done and not one I remember seeing before. Couldn't find a reference to the poster's creator anywhere, but if anyone knows, drop a comment so I can point a link in their direction.


• I'm not much for the toys (or action figures or whatever), but I had to take note of this one. Someone's selling kits to turn a boring old Joker toy into a really cool Nurse Joker.

Vicki Vale

As requested by a commenter a while back but I've been slow to get to, Vicki Vale is a recurring love interested from Silver Age Batman stories (which mostly read like the Adam West TV series, with some wacky science fiction mixed in). A reporter for the Gotham Gazette, Vale has a lot in common with Superman's Lois Lane. While dating Bruce Wayne and reporting on the activity of Batman, she often has suspicions that the two are one and the same, but by the end of the issue Batman has managed to fool her into thinking her theory can't be true.

Vicki Vale basically disappeared from the comics in the mid-1960s. However, in the 1989 Batman movie with Michael Keaton, Vicki Vale was written in as Batman/Bruce's main love interest, played by Kim Basinger. This resulted in a brief return to the comics, now as a TV talk show host.

She also appeared recently in Frank Miller and Jim Lee's All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder (pictured above) as a reporter, though the appearance was somewhat controversial since she spent the bulk of her time on the page in her underwear.

Pros: It's never a bad idea to put a gorgeous redhead in a movie (there's a story -- I don't know if it's true -- that the original Vicki Vale was drawn with a then-unknown Marilyn Monroe in mind, which you can read about here). And as with every other female character I've mentioned, Batman will probably need a love interest of some sort for the next movie.

Cons: Most people associate Vicki Vale with the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton Batman movie, and the Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale movies seem to intentionally distance themselves from that franchise.

How I'd do it: We left off in The Dark Knight with Batman as public enemy #1, so in addition to the cops going after the Bat, the local media would be hot on his trail. Enter Vicki Vale, tough young reporter looking to make her name by breaking the Batman story wide open. She seems to be making more progress than anyone else, so to keep a closer eye on her, Bruce Wayne asks her out. Still heartbroken over the loss of Rachel Dawes, he thinks he won't get emotionally involved, but of course he does.

Casting Guesses: It'd be from the same pool of actresses as Poison Ivy. But while I'd insist on Christina Hendricks for Miss Isley, I think Amy Adams is the best choice for Vicki Vale.

Verdict: I think the connection to the earlier Batman movie makes Vicki Vale somewhat unlikely, but she's a decent enough character who doesn't need any tweaking to fit this universe.

Rachel Weisz?

There's not much reason to believe this is true, since E!'s Ted Casablanca seems to be more about who's sleeping with who than getting actual inside information about the business end of things. But he had a story yesterday that Rachel Weisz is the likely choice to play Catwoman:

Weisz, thank heaven, according to insiders who are currently working on the Warner's production, which hasn't even been officially announced yet. But Weisz's name is so early on, not even Weisz's publicist claims to have knowledge of the casting notion. "Tell them to call her agent!" Weisz's rep screamed.

I briefly mentioned her as a possibility way back here, and I'm not any more sure about her now than I was then. I can definitely picture her in the outfit, but that's just because she's a fine looking woman. I can see her as Selina out of costume, too. What I can't picture is her posing a physical threat to Batman, or running along rooftops, or any of that stuff. It's a tall order to find someone who fits every aspect of the character, and maybe if Weisz is cast she'll surprise me. But I won't worry too much about it unless this rumor starts to gain momentum.

Casablanca followed up later in this article, repeating the Weisz/Catwoman rumor, and said that Batman 3 with Christopher Nolan directing is pretty much on, which I certainly hope is true:

Despite some recent interviews in which he down-played the possibility of returning as director again, Christopher Nolan (who helmed Knight) will for sure be back directing the third flick, we're assured by a production mole. Christian Bale will obviously rejoin his director pal, and we're very pleased to report that he'll be playing a "sexier" Bruce Wayne. This is heaven-sent news, as, let's face it, Bale couldn't have looked any more constipated in that last flick....

By the by, even though Warners did not comment on any of the above movie talk, additional studio sources did confirm it's certainly "expected" Bale and Nolan will be back, pending a script which is being written as we gossip

Joker Article

As part of their "Stars Icons" series (whatever that is) IGN has a feature on the Joker with a bunch of random info and some nifty images.

(this particular image, not from the article, was stolen by me from crump3t)

DVD/Blu Ray Today

It's DVD/Blu Ray launch day today. Check out slashfilm for all the details on the various versions with different promotional junk from different stores.

Also, tomorrow the trade paperback for Joker's Asylum comes out. It was a pretty hit or miss series for me, with one shot stories featuring villains like Two-Face, Scarecrow, and Poison Ivy, but I enjoyed the Penguin issue written by Scalped's Jason Aaron enough that I'd cautiously recommend the trade to fans of Batman's enemies.

Still More Nolan on Batman 3

Apparently making the publicity rounds for the DVD/Blu Ray release tomorrow, Christopher Nolan talked to USA Today and had this to say:

...most third acts in Hollywood stink. Look at the disappointing threequels for The Godfather, Superman and the original Batman. The conclusions weren't much better for the more recent Shrek, Spider-Man and Pirates of the Caribbean.

"I don't know why they're hard to do," Nolan says. "Maybe there's so much expectation to them. But I wouldn't want to do one if it weren't going to be as good as the first or second. That's not respectful to the fans."

And:

"The worst thing you could do now that you've gotten the plane back in the air is mess up the landing."

More Notlan on Batman 3

Over at All Things Fangirl, there's a recap of a Blu Ray release event that took place the other night, which included Christopher Nolan talking a little more about a third Batman movie:

If he made a third film, it would be for no reason but the continuation of story. He is currently looking into where the story would go and if it needs to go there. He maintained that it's very hard to make a movie of this scale (and specified he wasn't asking for our sympathy, drawing a laugh from the crowd) - it's two hard years and you gotta love it. One of his biggest fears is getting halfway through making a film and realizing it's unnecessary and he doesn't want to make it anymore. If there is a third story that needs to be told, there will be a third film, but nothing is set in stone or a given.

There's more about Blu Ray features, some kind of live on-line commentary with Nolan, and some other stuff, so it's worth reading the whole thing.

Dark Knight Re-release

The Dark Knight comes back to theatres on January 23rd:

Batman film The Dark Knight is to be re-released in US cinemas in January, upping its chances of its box-office takings crossing the $1 billion mark.

News & Notes

Wanderingbert on flickr is undertaking the Batman Villain Project, where he intends "to draw as many batman villains as possible. Even the obscure and mostly unknown ones. And even the dumb ones that may look interesting but suck as actual villains. Even them." Pictured above is one of "them," Doctor Phosphorus.

Elsewhere, Comics Should Be Good has a gallery of comic book covers where Batman gets punched.

News & Notes

Plenty of fun stuff showed up over the long weekend, here's the first batch of links:

• thinkernik made some posters for Batman 3, he wants to see Clive Owen as Black Mask and Eva Green as Catwoman. I could live with that.


• Batman on Film has a rumor that Batman production offices are set to open up in February. As much as I like the idea of things getting underway, I'd like to see Christopher Nolan signed on first.


• Two sites are considering titles for the next movie: Mr. Geekman says The Caped Crusader while Obsessed with Film wants The Dark Knight Returns. Personally, I don't really like either. The Dark Knight Returns should be reserved for an adaptation of Frank Miller's story, and The Caped Crusader sounds very Adam West-y. I'd prefer either something story-specific, like Batman: Fugitive or Batman: Redemption, or if it's going to be a more generic Batman title, Shadow of the Bat.

Elsewhere, Batman #681 came out this past week, wrapping up the Batman: R.I.P. storyline. The finale had some nice touches, but Batman R.I.P. wasn't really my cup of tea. Sandman writer Neil Gaiman takes over the Batman title for a couple of issues next, which has people pretty excited.