Wow, just noticed I hadn’t posted these. Here are a cou­ple of nice n’large Joker pic­tures for you to get your teeth into. The first one makes a great wallpaper.

Shia LaBoeuf’s acci­dent has led to quick resched­ul­ing whilst the crew await Shia’s recov­ery. How­ever, as time now ticks on it seems appar­ent that pro­duc­tion can­not wait for a full recov­ery — either because they will be put behind or LaBoeuf’s injuries will take too long to heal. Michael Bay will be work­ing these injuries into the sto­ry­line, to facil­i­tate the movie mak­ing process.

It is also good news that Shia was not drunk. We can restore our respect for him.

“You’re gonna see — that’s gonna go away,” Bay said. “That’s fresh news… He was not drunk. He was drink­ing hours and hours before.”
Shortly before 2:30 AM, another dri­ver ran a red light, accord­ing to author­i­ties who con­firmed LaBeouf is now not being inves­ti­gated for caus­ing the crash.

“I spoke to him yes­ter­day in the hos­pi­tal,” Bay said. “His two fin­gers are pretty mashed, but we’re fig­ur­ing out a way to shoot around it, kind of write it in the story.”

“We had a lit­tle heart to heart the week before when he bought a brand new motor­cy­cle and I [said] ‘Dude! You can­not ride that motor­cy­cle! If you crash, you put 1,500 peo­ple out of work,’” the direc­tor recounted. “He said, ‘Ok, I won’t ride it, I won’t ride it, I’ll just drive my truck.’”

“The kid really has his head together and you know, he’s only 22,” Bay said. “He’s doing a great job on this movie. He’s really matured since the last one and I love work­ing with him.”

— Access Hol­ly­wood.

Thanks Leroy!

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.

Sadly our caped cru­sader lost the top spot to The Mummy this Fri­day; tak­ing $12.7m ver­sus Bren­dan Fraser’s $15.3m. How­ever, com­ing back to the fore­font on Sat­ur­day — Bat­man returned to the top with a take of $17.4m against Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’s $14.7m.

The week­end fig­ures added another $43.8m to the TDK total and touch­ing dis­tance of the cov­eted $400m record. The Mummy made $42.4m, a close sec­ond, but a poor open­ing week­end for the movie.

Talk­ing with MTV, David Goyer says that he already “knows the theme” for the third Bat­man movie, although he also reit­er­ates that a third movie is not set in stone and it could “go either way”.

“I think that’s the scari­est thing – to think, could we come up with a third movie that was as good as the first two? Can we top our­selves?” screen­writer David Goyer asked aloud, almost rhetor­i­cally, in a recent con­ver­sa­tion with MTV News. “Doing it a third time would be a big proposition.”

Make no mis­take about it, though, a third film HAS been dis­cussed, Goyer con­fessed, reveal­ing that, while noth­ing is con­crete, both a vil­lain and a theme have been bandied about.

“We’ve only talked loosely about it, though, Chris and I,” Goyer said.

Inter­est­ingly, it’s the theme, and not the vil­lain, that most inter­ests me, espe­cially given how the lat­ter seems inex­orably tied to the for­mer in this new mod­ern Bat­man uni­verse. (Fear the pre­dom­i­nant issue in “Begins” pre­cip­i­tat­ing the intro­duc­tion of Scare­crow, esca­la­tion in “Knight” sim­i­larly call­ing for The Joker.

The fact that Goyer has a theme he wants to keep in mind for a pos­si­ble “Bat­man 3” means he also has a direc­tion, a cri­sis, and, yes, a villain.

So what is it?

“I have one,” Goyer said laugh­ing. “But I’m not going to tell you. Chris is very par­tic­u­lar about that.

“I do think, though, that if there’s not a third film – these two movies stand on their own,” he added. “I think it could go either way.”

/Film have also spo­ken with Chris­t­ian Bale and Christo­pher Nolan about Bat­man 3 — every­thing is still up in the air:

Nolan: “I don’t know what I’d do next, or what would hap­pen next. I felt in doing a sequel that it would be a big mis­take to try to hold any­thing back for future films. You have to put every­thing you can into this movie and try and make it as great as it can be.”

Chris­t­ian Bale: “I always like to have to think when I’m leav­ing the the­ater. I do love any movie that leaves me ques­tion­ing what has hap­pened, what is going to hap­pen. I see that in fin­ish­ing the movie I want to know what will hap­pen, what is going to hap­pen. But it is com­pletely in the hands of Chris, weather he decides to do that or not. It will be a lot of money that he didn’t give you any indi­ca­tion if that was going to hap­pen or not? But it’s com­pletely his deci­sion. I can’t imag­ine doing this with­out Chris. I don’t even want to con­sider that because he’s cre­ated this. This is his.”

And in an older EW arti­cle, Bale says some­thing similar:

Inter­viewer: So do you think there will be a part 3 of Bat­man?
Chris­t­ian Bale: Um, look, let’s wait and see…

Inter­viewer: Or, I guess it’d be part 6.
Chris­t­ian Bale: No, no, no, no, no. [Smil­ing] Part 3 is what I’d con­sider it, yeah, I don’t say part 6. Bat­man begins — that was the begin­ning there, with all due respect to the oth­ers. We are re-creating this. You know, obvi­ously the deci­sion is out of my hands. I would, know­ing the Dark Knight story, I would like very much to com­plete a tril­ogy. And I think that know­ing the story of The Dark Knight, it leaves you antic­i­pat­ing some­thing that really can get very, very inter­est­ing for a third. Now, the ques­tion would be: Is Chris going to be doing it? Because to me I find it tricky to imag­ine work­ing on it with­out it being a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Chris.

Thanks BatGirl567!

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.

Dis­ney has today announced that the Prince of Per­sia movie adap­ta­tion will no longer be hit­ting its June 19th 2009 release date — instead being pushed back a whole year to May 28th 2010. Rather than con­tend with the likes of Trans­form­ers 2, the PoP movie will now be up against Shrek Goes Fourth and Marvel’s new title, “Thor”.

An anony­mous source has sent in pic­tures from the lat­est film shoot at the Long Beach docks in Cal­i­for­nia to Seib­ertron. Once again, the set and deco match those seen in the Beth­le­hem shoot — imply­ing that these scenes will all be merged together somehow.

The images show us Opti­mus Prime in action, the new Audi R8 and what looks like the rumored Chevy Stingray. Mil­i­tary trucks and the ice cream truck are also on-hand and it all ends with a tasty explo­sion amongst some bar­rels — cue CG.