The Dark Knight Rises may be the most anticipated film left this summer, unless you’re one of us crazy people who can’t flipping wait for Step Up Revolution, and as we enter the final stretch before the film’s release on July 20 some incredible news about the production has emerged from the July 2012 issue of Empire Magazine (via Batman News), including a story from screenwriter David Goyer about the premiere of The Dark Knight, when unnamed Warner Bros. executives said they had plans for the third film: “It’s gonna be The Riddler, and we want it to be Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Before the surprising news that The Dark Knight Rises would feature Bane instead, The Riddler was the internet’s #1 choice for the film’s villain, spawning endless casting rumors and theories that the conundrum-obsessed criminal would be portrayed as a contemporary Zodiac-styled serial killer. Honestly, it wasn’t a terrible idea, but among the other revelations that sprang from the article was the fact that by Fall 2008, neither Christopher Nolan nor David Goyer knew who the villains would be, or even the plot of the film, but they did know how the franchise’s final scene would play out… and that the scene remained unchanged ever since.
In SPOILER-ish news, the article states that The Joker would “not be addressed at all” in The Dark Knight Rises. Catwoman, who will apparently never be called “Catwoman” in The Dark Knight Rises, almost didn’t make it into the film either, but screenwriter Jonathan Nolan (Chris’s brother) convinced the director that she was necessary.
CraveOnline will be back with more The Dark Knight Rises news after we load up on shark repellant.
