We posted these rumors a short while back (along with a Jolie Cat­woman one), but now some news of this cast­ing has come from the lips of Michael Caine in speak­ing with MTV:

“They’ve already got them in mind,” said Caine, when asked who he’d like to see take up arms against the Caped Cru­sader. “It’s Johnny Depp as The Rid­dler. And The Pen­guin is Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man. I read it in the paper.”

So Caine is like the rest of us, read­ing gos­sip in the tabloids, right? Except for one thing…according to the actor, he con­firmed the news through the stu­dio itself.

“When Christo­pher [Nolan] said we were going to do ‘The Dark Knight’ next, I didn’t what that meant in Bat­man terms,” related Caine, who plays Bruce Wayne’s loyal but­ler, Alfred Pen­ny­worth. “I said, ‘What’s the story?’ and he said The Joker. I said, ‘Oh, s–t! How are you going to top Jack [Nichol­son]?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve cast Heath Ledger. And I went ‘Ha! I couldn’t top Jack, but if any­one could, maybe Heath could.’ And he did.

“I was with [a Warner Bros.] exec­u­tive and I said, ‘Are we going to make another one?’ They said yeah. I said, ‘How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says ‘I’ll tell you how you top Heath — Johnny Depp as The Rid­dler and Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man as The Pen­guin.’ I said, ‘S–t, they’ve done it again!’” [Laughs]

No doubt there will be some offi­cial clar­i­fi­ca­tion of this announce­ment in the com­ing days, how­ever what is inter­est­ing is the clear inten­tion for The Pen­guin and The Rid­dler to star in the third movie, whether Depp or Hoff­man sign on is another mat­ter — and one that I still don’t see being con­firmed for a long while yet.

How do you feel about The Rid­dler and Pen­guin poten­tially appear­ing in Bat­man 3?

Christo­pher Nolan has stated an inter­est in the exten­sive and elab­o­rate 70 year his­tory of Bat­man — par­tic­u­larly the inter­est­ing parts that have not yet been in the movies or the six­ties tele­vi­sion show.

Mean­while, The Rid­dler, The Pen­guin and Cat­woman are all vil­lains that have been bandied about as poten­tials for the next movie; I per­son­ally doubt whether we will see these char­ac­ters pop up in the next fea­ture. Instead I think we will see Nolan opt for a vil­lain that impacts more on Batman/Bruce Wayne’s pro­file. As seen so dev­as­tat­ingly with The Joker, when the vil­lain really messes with the Hero in every which way, the sto­ries become much more inter­twined, com­plex and exciting.

So — on that note:

Which villain(s) do you want to see in Bat­man 3?

The less obvi­ous, the bet­ter — feel free to include your cast­ing wishlists.

Now that The Dark Knight has been out for over three week­ends, I will begin to splat­ter more spoiler-ish infor­ma­tion into posts as we begin to dis­cuss “Bat­man 3″, or what­ever name we can derive for the next film.

Christo­pher Nolan hasn’t yet signed on for a third Bat­man movie, and his screen­writer John Nolan is still on the set of Ter­mi­na­tor Sal­va­tion. Until the key play­ers sign-on, includ­ing David Goyer, ANY cast­ing rumors that you see are most likely wish­lists or arti­cles look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on The Dark Knight’s popularity.

Tak­ing this point into con­sid­er­a­tion, I now present you the three main rum­blings that are spread­ing across the internet:

Angelina Jolia as Catwoman

This rumor seems to have orig­i­nated from an NY Daily News arti­cle which reck­ons that Angelina Jolie should play Cat­woman in the next Bat­man incar­na­tion — or so for­mer Cat­woman and ‘Bat­man icon’ Julie New­mar thinks.

“Angelina would own the part. My indus­try friends tell me [she] has made inquiries about the role. I can under­stand how it would piqué her inter­est. Cat­woman is Batman’s one true love. She’s tremen­dously pop­u­lar with women because she’s both a hero­ine and a vil­lain­ess. When you look at the stag­ger­ing box office of this cur­rent film, which actress wouldn’t want to jump in?”

Although this goes against Nolan and Goyer’s incli­na­tion NOT to bring back the humanoid feline.

Johnny Depp as The Riddler

Mean­while, the supri­ous and ter­ri­ble National Enquirer, via Jake and Hol​ly​wood​.com are tip­ping Johnny Depp to play The Rid­dler. That’s the extent of the news feature.

“(Pro­duc­ers) are con­vinced that the role of the Rid­dler is per­fect for Depp. Johnny’s a pro. He’ll be able to take direc­tion from direc­tor Chris Nolan and still make the char­ac­ter his own.”

(SPOILER: I’ve also read rumors that Depp would be a good sub­sti­tute for The Joker should they wish to bring him back in some capacity.)

Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man as The Penguin

The tabloid also thinks:

“And what bet­ter Pen­guin is there than Philip Sey­mour Hoffman.”

I can guar­an­tee that come 12 months, none of these pre­dic­tions will be close. Fan reac­tions to these rumors are also entirely incon­se­quen­tial — we all remem­ber how masses reacted when Heath Ledger was cast as The Joker.