Christopher Nolan is reportedly auditioning for a relatively unknown actress to take the female lead role in Batman 3. Are we looking at Catwoman, we wonder?
There's a little bit of us playing join the dots here, but there's logic to the thinking nonetheless, and it ties in to rumours that have followed the upcoming new adventure for Batman that Christopher Nolan is currently working on.
Nolan, who has already cast Tom Hardy in Batman 3, is now reported to be auditioning to find a fresh face for the female lead in the new movie. The news has broken over at Moviehole, which reports that, due to the tight security on the production, many of those meeting for the role aren't being told it's Batman 3 that they're going up for.
However, the thinking here appears to be that Christopher Nolan is actively hunting for a lesser known actress for his film, with the report suggesting that he's seeing women in their late 20s/early 30s. And this inevitably leads to speculation as to what role in particular he might be looking to fill.
You don't have to speculate too far, therefore, to suggest that a major lead female role in a Batman picture does point heavily towards Catwoman. Particularly given that Catwoman has long been suggested and rumoured for inclusion in Nolan's follow-up to The Dark Knight.
It's already strongly suspected that The Riddler is going to be the lead villain in the film, yet in the same way that The Joker and Harvey Two Face comfortably co-existed in The Dark Knight, Nolan is the one comic book movie director who can make the two villain approach convincingly work.
We could, of course, be barking up the wrong proverbial tree here, of course. Moviehole asks the Catwoman question too, but its sources on that particular matter don't appear any more clued in to whether that's who Nolan is looking for than anyone else. But it's unlikely to be Harley Quinn, and we can't see Batman 3 necessarily opted for a Vicki Vale-esque romantic lead either. Poison Ivy, as has been pointed out elsewhere, wouldn't really fit, although Talia al Ghul would fit into the Nolan take on Gotham well. That might be the other option.
Moviehole has more on the story here, but if auditions are underway now, and with the shoot starting in April, there may yet be some time before we know the identity of who Christian Bale's Batman will be facing in the summer of 2012.