Nolan answered,

“Yes and no, I suppose, would be the answer. We know we would be aiming for 2012, and that’s been talked about, but we’re just working on the script really. My brother’s been hard at work on it for quite some time, based on a story that myself and David Goyer have written.”

“There is nobody, there’s no script, there’s nothing. […] It can’t possibly be made before 2011 because ‘Inception’ is such a big picture.”

[…]

“Johnny Depp is great in anything, but there is no Johnny Depp in this Batman. They tell me in no uncertain terms.“

“Inception” is billed as “a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind”, with an original screenplay by Nolan it plans to begin shooting this summer with a summer 2010 release in mind.

Bearing this news in mind, the earliest point at which production on The Dark Knight sequel might begin is Summer 2010, and with production taking approximately 14 months it could be late 2011 or Summer 2012 before the caped crusader returns to theaters.

Uslan will be onboard as executive producer for the “Dark Knight” sequel, which he estimates will be [in] theaters by 2011. As for the identity of the next round of Batman’s supervillains and love interests, Uslan remains tight-lipped. “It’s one of those deals where if I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he says with a chuckle.

From MTV:

“I think Harvey — if he’s not dead — is in a serious coma,” stated Eckhart, “and I’m not sure he’s coming out. They might pull the plug on him.” Seemingly firm words, right? Except even the notion that his alter-ego is still alive is a clear departure from previous statements where the actor was perfectly fine confirming Harvey’s death at the business end of a freefalling drop.

We know from our recent interview with producer Charles Roven that screenwriters Christopher Nolan and David Goyer have begun brainstorming ideas for a third “Batman” film…could something out of that have led to Eckhart’s about-face on Two-Face? His wink-wink-nod-nod answer seems to suggest that something else may be at play.

Are MTV clutching at straws here?

Time to get some real voices on the sequel to The Dark Knight; Alan Horn, president of Warner Bros. has recently spoken with Collider:

We’ve been talking to Chris Nolan and what we have to do is get him in the right place and have him tell us what he thinks the notion might be for a great story, but Chris did a great job and we’d love to have him come back and do another one.”

As far as the timing of the project, he went onto say: “The story is everything and we are very respectful of Chris. We have a wonderful relationship with him and we are going to be respectful of his timing and we want to get it right. Also, I think the fans expect that – they want us to make a terrific movie – we have to give them another great movie.”

Nolan says he is jotting notes and doing some rough outlines for a third story, but he hasn’t yet found anything he’s willing to commit to film, despite Warner Bros.’ eagerness to get a new film underway.

“It was obvious when the box office was so big ($530 million domestically) that we had underestimated how ready fans were to reboot the franchise,” he says. “The worst thing you could do now that you’ve gotten the plane back in the air is mess up the landing.”

[Talking about sequels and a third movie] “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.“

Nolan also points out his reasons for not putting outtakes or deleted scenes on the DVD — not a single extra scene involving The Joker:

Nolan says he wasn’t keeping deleted scenes from fans. “For my past three films, I really haven’t had scenes that didn’t make it in the movie,” he says. “If it’s in the final script, I tend put it on screen.”

Any outtakes, however, were intentionally left off the DVD. “I don’t like outtakes or gag reels,” Nolan says. “I don’t think it’s respectful to the actors, who signed on to have their performance on screen, not the takes that didn’t work out. It discourages actors from going all-out if they think every mistake is going on the disc.”

This is a very good read..

Went to the Dark Knight Blu Ray release event with Chris Nolan last night.

Before tonight I had never even HEARD of BD Live. Apparently it’s Xbox Live for Blu-Ray? If you have a BD Live enabled Blu Ray player or a PS3, then you can connect to the internet and partake in the potential awesomeness. The Dark Knight is Warner Brothers’ first foray into this format and it’s shaping up to be reason alone to invest in a Blu-Ray Player.

First of all, it comes with tons of content, waiting to be streamed for free– the newest Warner’s trailers, episodes of Warner Premiere Motion Comics (Mad Love! Shadow of Ra’s al Ghul!) and more. And because everything is streaming, you can get to the content faster and it doesn’t take up any hard drive space. One of my favorite features of TDK BD Live is the commentary option. With a computer & webcam, you can record YOURSELF giving commentary for the whole movie or just a scene here, a scene there. Then, when people go on BD Live, they can select your commentary to watch with the film. Now, it’s doubtful that I would ever watch a stranger’s commentary, but a friend’s? Certainly. Maybe even someone famous? A blogger, a writer, a director, an actor, a critic, a technician — people not involved with the film who would have no business doing commentary for the dvd, but would have an interesting perspective, making their thoughts available to the general public? Yes, I’m into that.

Also available is partaking in live text commentary — a bunch of people watching the movie at the same time, texting or typing their thoughts as the film goes on. So a whole group of friends, all in different parts of the world, could watch The Dark Knight together and read each other’s commentary.

And you heard it here first — on December 18th, Chris Nolan is doing a live commentary with 100,000 Dark Knight Blu Ray owners. He will host the screening and answer questions as it goes on. With 100,000 people, it will most likely get a little crazy and who knows if Chris Nolan will tell me how exactly the Jim Gordan thing works (trying to keep this post spoiler free…), but it still sounds pretty damn cool to me. In Nolan’s words, “It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like…the potential of it is very exciting.” (Note: It had previously been announced that at some point Nolan would do a commentary, but only tonight was the date of this chat confirmed)

After learning all about BD Live and again wishing I had lots and lots money to spend on Blu Ray players and Blu Ray discs and giant HD televisions, we got to spend a half hour with Chris Nolan. Here are some highlights from the discussion.

–It was “a shock” to Nolan & his team that TDK was so successful i.e. is the 2nd highest grossing film of all time

–He really studied how to approach a sequel — what works versus what doesn’t. His goal was to “provide a new experience, stretch in all directions” He wanted to delve deeper into the characters, both old & new and stage the action and story on a “grander scale”, using an “operatic sensibility”

–He wanted the film to connect to what we as an audience are concerned about. What would impact us, what would excite us. In the end he realized he was tapping into his own “fear of anarchy” and that the Joker was a “distillation of that force”

–In his approach to the entire franchise, Nolan wanted to use a great ensemble a la Richard Donner in Superman. Get a cast that is wholly talented, all of whom bring a lot to the table. This was the mindset in casting Batman Begins & was carried through to Dark Knight

–In reference to Heath Ledger, he had “Something to express that was very much in line with the character in the script. It just meshed”

–Compared the home Blu-Ray version of Dark Knight to the big screen IMAX version and said that the advent of Blu-Ray is a vast improvement technically and important for the translation of IMAX to home video. Now people at home can see the difference between shooting in IMAX and shooting in 35mm in a way that even audiences who saw TDK with a 35mm projection didn’t get to experience. Blu Ray points out the “grain structure” and “focus anomalies” and will actually expand in size the same way the IMAX print did, all of which are important for optimal TDK viewing.

–Drew inspiration from Frank Miller’s work in the 80s — more serious, more contemporary

–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 is no 3 hour cut anywhere — no deleted scenes. He, John Nolan & David Goyer would cut scenes before they ever made it to the screen in what Nolan calls an “aggressive editorial approach.” Their criteria was that every scene needs three reasons to be in the film or it’s out. This made for a difficult time in the editing suite as every single scene was essential and could not be removed.

–The music ended up playing a huge role in pacing and storytelling

–Shooting in IMAX is about “clarity” and “sharpness” not being big. It’s about providing a “sense of the screen disappearing.”

–He was shocked that no one ever tried to work with action films in IMAX before & would love to shoot a film entirely in IMAX. The problem with this? An IMAX camera is very noisy, SO noisy in fact that all the dialogue in every IMAX scene had to be looped in post — a feat more difficult for the younger generation of actors, who have less ADR experience. Would ideally like to shoot a hybrid film where all MOS scenes are IMAX are all scenes with dialogue are 65mm.

–When translating a story to a screenplay, the first question he asks himself is “What is the point of view?” For Memento, the protagonist couldn’t remember what had happened right before, therefore telling the story backwards seemed a natural device. In TDK, there are many characters and a gradual rise in tension, so linear works best.

–The videos shot by the Joker were in fact shot and mostly directed by Heath Ledger. For the first video, Wally Pfister came in and checked the lights, the sound guys set up a few extra mics, everyone hid around the corner and they let Heath play. Ledger had been planning to direct and was an incredible collaborator with a great mind. Nolan trusted him implicitly. Ledger’s work on the first video was so fantastic that Nolan wasn’t even there for the second video shoot with Anthony Michael Hall. He gave Ledger the camera and said “do whatever you want.” Apparently every take Ledger did was different, but always in line with the story and always fantastic. Where are those on the dvd, Mr. Nolan?!!

–Something was mentioned about scanning 8k…I couldn’t follow the technical speak. Which is sad for me.

–He studied English Lit in school and is a self taught director. Started playing around with a camera at age 7 or 8. Believes in the Kubrick school of thought that the best way to learn how to make a movie is to make one.

He then bid us goodbye and a screening of Dark Knight began. Have I mentioned I really love that movie?

Also an important bit of information — Missed TDK in IMAX the first time around? The Dark Knight is being re-released on January 23rd in IMAX theaters across the country. If you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity and buy your IMAX tickets the moment they go on sale.

Nolan: I don’t think our Batman, our Gotham, lends itself to that kind of cross-fertilization. It goes back to one of the first things we wrangled with when we first started putting the story together: Is this a world in which comic books already exist? Is this a world in which superheroes already exist? If you think of “Batman Begins” and you think of the philosophy of this character trying to reinvent himself as a symbol, we took the position — we didn’t address it directly in the film, but we did take the position philosophically — that superheroes simply don’t exist. If they did, if Bruce knew of Superman or even of comic books, then that’s a completely different decision that he’s making when he puts on a costume in an attempt to become a symbol. It’s a paradox and a conundrum, but what we did is go back to the very original concept and idea of the character. In his first appearances, he invents himself as a totally original creation.

GB: That doesn’t lend itselt to having him swing on a rope across the Metropolis skyline.

Nolan: No, correct, it’s a different universe. It’s a different way of looking at it. Now, it’s been done successfully, very successfully, in the comics so I don’t dispute it as an approach. It just isn’t the approach we took. We had to make a decision for “Batman Begins.”

GB: A different path…

Nolan: Yes, completely different. It would have given a very, very different meaning to what Bruce Wayne was leaving home to do and coming back home to do and putting on the costume for and all the rest. We dealt with on its own terms: What does Batman mean to Bruce Wayne, what is he trying to achieve? He has not been influenced by other superheroes. Of course, you see what we’re able to do with Joker in this film is that he is able to be quite theatrical because we set up Batman as an example of intense theatricality in Gotham. It starts to grow outward from Batman. But the premise we began with is that Batman was creating a wholly original thing. To be honest, we went even further than the comics on this point. I can’t remember at what point in the comics history the idea came about that he was a fan of Zorro as a kid. I haven’t researched that, but I don’t believe it goes back terribly far.”

The interview continues by discussing Nolan’s next project, his time off and the upcoming Academy Awards:

GB: You’ve said you aren’t sure what you next project will be. But clearly Warner Bros. looks at Batman as a core part of their movie business, perhaps now more than ever, and there are marketplace pressures on them to schedule the next installment of the franchise. Are you getting a lot of pressure to make a decision?

Nolan: They’re being extremely gracious. I have a very good relationship with the studio. They know that I really needed to go on holiday and take some time to figure what I want to do next. They’ve been very respectful of that, which is terrific and one of the reasons I enjoy working with Warner Bros.

GB: The nominations for the 81st Academy Awards will be announced in January. How meaningful would it be for the cast and crew of “The Dark Knight” if the late Heath Ledger is nominated for best supporting actor?

Nolan: I think the thing that has always been important to me in light of Heath’s death is the responsibility I’ve felt to his work. The responsibility of crafting the film in such a way that his performance came across the way he intended. Clearly, that has been the case. That’s one of the reasons I take such pride in the film.

I felt a great wave of relief, really, as people first started to see the performance and it was clear that they were getting the performance. It’s easy to forget with everything that’s happened what an enormous challenge it was for Heath to take on this iconic role. He rose to that challenge so admirably that any expression of people being excited or moved by his performance is a wonderful thing. Whatever form that takes. People coming to see his performance and getting it. It’s been extremely satisfying for all of us already. Anything that adds to that would be wonderful.

In other news,