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Batman on Film just broke a story that puts everything about the next Batman movie up in the air: according to the site's trusted sources it is far from a sure thing that Christopher Nolan will be back to direct his third Batman picture.

The site quotes an insider that tells them Nolan wanted to bring back The Joker for the follow-up film to The Dark Knight but that Heath Ledger's death deeply affected him to the point that he believed TDK would be his coda on the character. The source adds that Nolan has batted around story concepts with screenwriters David Goyer and Jonathan Nolan but that nothing has been decided and the earliest that a sequel could come would be 2012...but more likely 2013.

Even when you stop and consider all of the bogus casting rumors that were reported last summer about who might play what villain in the next Batman movie, today's story coming out of the Australian Herald Sun newspaper tops them all in its implausibility. According to these guys, Christian Bale's co-star in Terminator Salvation, Sam Worthington (and who's also Australian), is "tipped" by "industry gossip" to land the part of Bruce Wayne/Batman in the next Batman movie.

Not only has this piece of "gossip" never been reported by any other outlet, the only reason why the Herald Sun could give as to why present Batman Christian Bale would be shown the door is because of his infamous meltdown tape from the set of T4.

Like we said, as Batman rumors go this is the flimsiest one we've heard to date but we aim to be complete.

According to an unconfirmed scoop published by IESB, Jonathan Nolan, his brother Chris and David Goyer are currently working on a script for their third Batman picture. The site caught up with Charles Roven, one of the producers/guiding forces behind the new direction for the film version of Batman, and asked him if there was any truth to the rumor. Here's Roven's answer:

"The creative driver of the project at this point is Chris. There’s really nothing more for me to say about that. When he feels that he’s got something to talk about, then we’ll be able to talk about it."

Roven dodged another dicey question about if he knew anything about what villains were being used for the new movie by saying that he didn't want to talk about that project anymore.

In an interview with the Courier Post, the executive producer of all the Batman movies for the past 20 years lets slip the very first mention of a possible release date for the next movie. In the piece Michael Uslan tells the paper that the estimated target date is 2011, two years away from now. And furthermore, Uslan hints that he knows something about what villains and love interest for the caped crusader may appear in movie #3 of the reboot continuity series. However, "It's one of those deals where if I told you, I'd have to kill you," Uslan toys with the interviewer.

"It was obvious when the box office was so big [for The Dark Knight] that we had underestimated how ready fans were to reboot the franchise," director Christopher Nolan told USA Today about where the plans for a sequel are right now. "The worst thing you could do now that you've gotten the plane back in the air is mess up the landing."

But that doesn't mean that there hasn't been any movement on a third Batfilm in the Nolanverse. He told the paper that he has started "jotting notes and doing some rough outlines for a third story" but the work hasn't progressed to the point where he would want to start writing a screenplay.

"I don't know why they're hard to do," Nolan said about the quality level of the third chapter in a movie series. "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."

Can the next Batman movie top The Dark Knight? Not even the director is sure it can be done.

"There are two things to be said," Christopher Nolan said in a one-on-one interview with the Los Angeles Times' Hero Complex column. "One is the emphasis on story. What's the story? Is there a story that's going to keep me emotionally invested for the couple of years that it will take to make another one? That's the overriding question. On a more superficial level, I have to ask the question: How many good third movies in a franchise can people name? [Laughs.] At the same time, in taking on the second one, we had the challenge of trying to make a great second movie, and there haven't been too many of those either. It's all about the story really. If the story is there, everything is possible. I hope that was a suitably slippery answer."

It's an awesome answer Chris, and we'd like to offer this suggestion: don't think of the third movie as a third movie, think of it as a continuation!

David Goyer tells MTV News that all the Batman 3 rumors are "B.S." And he means all of them: Chris Nolan has not signed on for the threequel, and villains have not been decided upon (much less cast). According to Goyer, "Chris and I haven’t even talked about it. He quite understandably is taking a long, long vacation and wants to purge himself." And who can blame him?

Is Christopher Nolan signed on for a third Bat film? That’s what Slashfilm thinks, based on a listing in the industry periodical Production Weekly, which lists films in various stages of production. According to Slashfilm, Nolan is listed as the director of the third film, with the previously noted production start date of February, 2009.

Slash notes all the intelligent caveats, such as even though PW gets their information primarily from studio sources, it would be very odd for Warners to list the film in PW before they trumpeted a massive press release about Nolan signing on to do a third Bat film.

IESB’s Robert Sanchez chatted up some Warner Bros. execs after watching the Watchmen footage today and reeled in some WB superhero tidbits, which you can read here. For this page, though, the important thing is that the Warners exec denied all the "Batman 3 starts in ’09" rumors that have been bouncing around. It seems Christopher Nolan just got back from vacation, and those talks haven’t even started yet.

Interestingly, the exec said that the Green Lantern movie is looking "extremely good" and looks like it will "definitely be going forward Spring of ’09" (all quotes are in IESB’s words). Maybe all the Batman On Film scoopers are assuming that they’re being hired for Batman 3 when it’s going to turn out to be Green Lantern? Only time and more scoops will tell…

A source "in the know" to Batman on Film confirms that they've also heard rumors that the Dark Knight sequel will go into pre-production in February ’09 and will shoot next summer.

Batman On Film hears rumors that pre-pre-production on Batman 3 (or whatever they’re calling it) is about to begin. They’re hearing this from various former Dark Knight crew types – carpenters, stuntpeople, etc. – but things are still sketchy.

And now, as expected, Johnny Depp weighs in with his denial on the Riddler rumor. On the day that The Dark Knight breaks the $500 million barrier -- making it second only to Titanic for highest domestic-grossing film of all time -- JoBlo links to an interview with an unknown South Florida radio station that Johnny did about his reunion with his old rock band The Kids for the upcoming Sheila Witkin Memorial Concert. At one point the hosts ask him point blank about the rumors that he’ll play Edward Nigma. "Oh yeah, I heard about that," Depp replied. "Not that I know of." He then added, "It seems like it would be a fun gig for a while, yeah."

You can hear it yourself right here. You’ll have to turn it up a bit to hear Johnny, as he was calling from France and his levels are a little lower than everyone else.

Depp also mentions something very cool that he, Colin Farrell and Jude Law are doing. Heath Ledger’s will had never been updated to include his 27-month-old daughter Matilda Rose, so the three actors -- who took over the role Heath Ledger was playing in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – are all donating their paychecks to the young girl. "Basically, all we said was, 'It's Heath's money, and it should go to 'Tilda,'" Depp said.

So now it’s confirmed that Depp is as cool as we all thought he was.

Gotta give it to MTV News, they move fast. Yesterday MTV Splash Page reported the rumor, supplied by a Warner Bros. exec to Michael Caine, that the next Bat film will feature Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin. Now MTV News has caught up with Hoffman at the Toronto Film Festival and asked him directly about his plans to carry umbrellas and hang out with flightless birds. His answer is as you’d expect.

"No one has talked to me about it ever — never," Hoffman said. "It happened, like, five years ago, too. It was a rumor back then and it’s still a rumor." He laughs when he adds "It’s just in the press. It’s funny." He also said he’s not sure he’s even met Dark Knight writer-director Christopher Nolan.

Hoffman does confess to being "a real cheerleader" of comic book movies, as well as a big comic book collector in his younger days. But in the end, he said, "I think I’m more interested in seeing someone else do it. I don’t know if I’d be a good Penguin to be quite honest."

Now we just need Johnny Depp to deny the rumor (as we expect he will) and we’ll be back to a clean square one.

According to Michael Caine, the next Bat film will feature not one but TWO villains, played by two of our best living actors.

"I was with [a Warners] executive," Caine tells MTV News at the Toronto Film Festival, "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!'" Caine ends his anecdote with a laugh.

The question is, is the laugh on us? Almost all the time that you hear this too-good-to-be-true casting, it is. Guess we gotta wait for the stars (or Warner Bros.) to confirm or deny.

Australian artist Josh McMahon has photoshopped up some beautiful posters for the Dark Knight sequel, casting Oscar-winning actor Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose) as Catwoman and Kristen Bell as a sexycreepy Harley Quinn. Check out his posters for Gotham City (the rumored title for the third Bat film) on his new site  -- apparently his normal host, deviantArt, kicked these posters off their server. Was this fan art a little too good for their lawyers’ tastes, maybe? Then head over to Josh’s deviantArt pages for Anne Hathaway as Batgirl and Rose McGowan as Hawkgirl, among other great pieces.

Meanwhile, over on Jo Blo the site notes that, in all the Dark Knight sequel fever, people have forgotten one simple thing: Christopher Nolan hasn’t signed on for the third film yet. Right now Nolan is on vacation -- his wife, TDK producer Emma Thomas, probably didn’t mind the time off, either. Producer Charles Roven told The Hollywood Reporter that Nolan has made no decision as of yet as to what his next film will be.