First comes word that Franco, though on a career "hot streak", has been forced to turn down several movie roles. Mostly because he's being loyal to his buddies David Gordon Green and Danny McBride and will go make a stoner movie in Northern Ireland with them this summer. This scheduling has forced him to drop out of big prestige (get it?) picture Inception, a Christopher Nolan-directed film to star Leonardo DiCaprio. His grad classes are also interfering with an offer to costar with Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love. (Though, that actually might be a good thing.)

He's stretched in so many different directions. He's watching the whole Criterion collection, dashing over to LA to give a big-time speech, and making late night house calls to a Columbia student, at her dorm. Well, so says a tipster, anyway:

Well, at approximately 4:00AM this last Saturday night, I saw James Franco get signed into a Columbia residence hall by a girl (whose name escapes me at the moment but could find out rather easily). So here I am wondering what the hell James is doing getting signed in by some college junior girl in her PJs, who if you care to know is not the prettiest of girls by anyone's standards. Doesn't Franco have a girl of his own to go home to? Does she know Franco goes to chill out with college girls in their PJs on a Saturday night?

Phew! So basically something's gotta give. Either he puts school and academic-related speaking engagements and Criterion bids for intellectual cred on the back burner, or he sidelines his acting career. We'd guess that, in the end, flashy movies and money will win out. It'll just take that one project he really wants to do, and then it's goodbye, Mr. Chips.

The modern career boy just can't have it all, sadly.

According to Variety, Nolan is determined to make a non-Bat film his next project, though at least WB has kept him in the family:

Warner Bros. is tying up a big deal with its "Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan for a big-scale spec script titled "Inception" that Nolan wrote and will direct as his likely next film.

WB is aiming for a summer 2010 release; production begins this summer.

Given the reported size of Inception, it's likely that post-production and a worldwide press tour could tie Nolan up until the fall of 2010; even if his brother Jonathan has a script for the Dark Knight sequel ready to go at that point, a winter 2011 feels like the earliest release possible (though summer 2012 seems like a far better bet). It's possible that WB could move ahead quickly with a different helmer, but Nolan would have to sign off on the decision since WB seems intent on retaining its cozy relationship with him. Will Batmania ebb over the next several years? Perhaps, but at least it'll give Christian Bale time to work out his lifetime supply of expletives on someone else's set.

• Nolan tackles 'Inception' for WB [Variety]

The DGA selected Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon), Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight) and Gus Van Sant (Milk) as this year's nominees, with the winner to be announced Jan. 31; Nolan symbolized the closest thing to a wild card among this year's crop, with Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky) widely presumed to have slid off the bubble since his recent critics'-award run. The odds favor most of of them to continue on to the Oscars, where four of last year's five DGA nominees preceded them. Sean Penn is still pissed.

• 'Dark Knight' swoops into DGA nom [LAT]

On both the front and back of the DVD, the words "A Christopher Nolan Film" were marked out. We initially brushed off the matter (assuming some posthumous Joker vandalism) until another tipster wrote in today about his own censored screener. "I just wonder what's the rationale - conspiracy to cockblock Nolan from Oscar consideration?" asked the tipster. "Secret WB plan to put Ratner in the running for Batman 3: Egghead Takes Gotham?"

We called Warner Bros. to find out, and a helpful publicist sighed. "You must be WGA," she said. "It's because the guild won't accept a possessory credit for a director." Thus, a poor awards season intern must censor every DVD with black pen. We eagerly await the day that the WGA not only retains the services of the "Unimportant Defacers Team" to enact web-wide cleanup, but sends Patric Verrone into every Suncoast Video in Southern California to scrawl over the terribly offensive possessory credits awarded to Space Chimps. Way to pick your battles, WGA!

Frustrated over the superhero's incursion into his centuries-old city's cultural turf, mayor Hüseyin Kalkan's proposed lawsuit would nevertheless omit Batman creator Bob Kane, publisher DC Comics and film franchisee Warner Bros. as Nolan's co-defendants. Instead, it would hold the filmmaker himself singly responsible for the region's growing international reputation as a brooding, froggy-voiced world capital of mayhem — none of it in glorious IMAX:

“The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us … There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us,” Kalkan told to the Doğan news agency.

Mayor Kalkan, speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News and the Economic Review, said last year foreign media picked up on Batman and the city’s increasing suicide rates among women. He said a columnist asked why Batman’s mayor did not sue the movie Batman for royalties while struggling with economic problems. “We found this criticism right and started to look for legal possibilities of a case like that,” he said.

Naturally, we sympathize with the mayor's social crisis, not to mention the bind in which Batman natives have found themselves outside the country; one Turk in Germany told reporters that Warner Bros. issued a cease-and-desist from naming his two restaurants after his hometown. To be fair, however, Batman Grill, The Dark Bite™ and a spectrum of other eatery variations are in fact the fiercely protected province of Six Flags, and a lawyer in Istanbul noted that the Batman Municipality has already missed the periodduring which it could file an objection to Batman's trademark as a superhero.

Still, we think this is far from over, with the whole scenario prompting noted Oscar diplomacy expert Dave Karger to reconsider his controversial theory on "How Obama Helps Batman." This is NATO's jurisdiction all the way.

• Real life Batman faces super test [Hürriyet Daily News via Hollywood Newsroom]

GB: Watching "The Dark Knight," it’s very easy to imagine the Joker returning to Gotham, the way his fate remains unresolved. When you were writing the film, did you anticipate that the Joker would be back in the third film?

NOLAN: No, really and in truth, I only deal with one film at a time. I find myself sort of protesting this issue a lot. We’ve never attempted to save anything for a sequel or set up anything for a sequel.

...GB: Could you see actually yourself not making the third Batman film?

NOLAN: Well ... let me think how to put this. There are two things to be said. 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.

And we hope that Nolan is simply negotiating for a bigger payday, as a potential Batman sequel with Michael Bay or Brett Ratner at the helm is enough to make us commit seppuku via batarang. Sure, everyone wants to avoid a Godfather, Part III situation, but think of the fans! Think of Heath Ledger's legacy! Think of Brian Austin Green!

• Christopher Nolan on 'Dark Knight' and its box-office billion: 'It's mystifying to me' [LAT]

“No one has talked to me about it ever — never,” replied Hoffman. “It happened, like, five years ago, too. It was a rumor back then and it’s still a rumor. [laughs] It’s just in the press. It’s funny.”

...“I’m such a fan of those movies,” related Hoffman. “Comic book movies in general I look forward to — I am a real cheerleader for them. I want them to do well because those are terrific stories. As a kid I was a big comic book collector. What [Nolan]’s doing is taking it in a whole other exciting great place. I’m more a fan, so the interest of being in it isn’t that great. It’s more the interest in wanting to see the next one. It’s probably better that way.”

When further pressed for his level of interest in the role if Warner Bros. approached him about the role, Hoffman said, “I don’t know. 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. [laughs]”

Truth be told, we could never quite believe the rumors that placed both the Penguin and Catwoman in Christopher Nolan's next film — does he really want to remake Batman Returns? Similarly, we don't expect Johnny Depp as the Riddler, since that villain already toplined the third installment of the prior series. If, as he's said, Nolan intends to dip much deeper into Batman's rogues gallery, let's start the rumors right here, right now. Can we get an "amen" for Shia as Killer Croc?

[Photo Credit: AP]

• ‘Dark Knight’ Update: Philip Seymour Hoffman Responds To Casting Rumor, ‘I Don’t Know If I’d Be A Good Penguin’ [MTV]

I'll be a happy audience member this time. And what's gone on with Heath and everything... I think Heath was the one that was going to come back. And since he can't... (Pauses) You know, Chris hasn't said that he's going to make another one. ... I'm sure they drove the Brinks truck up to his house and dumped money on his lawn. But I think Chris wants to go out and make other movies, too. And he should. He's an independent filmmaker at heart. He's got a lot of ideas.

Now that's a fittingly bleak rejoinder to post-TDK gossip, though it should be mentioned that any Brinks visit was as much a reward for Nolan's current success as it was a down payment on his soul through 2011 — the presumed release date for the Dark Knight follow-up that (barring catastrophe) will be made by the same creative team in the years ahead. Hope you enjoyed your holiday, Mr. Nolan — now get to work! Cher's expecting your phone call!

• Aaron Eckhart Discusses The Future Of Harvey Dent [AICN]

A studio executive said: "Cher is Nolan's first choice to play Catwoman. He wants to her to portray her like a vamp in her twilight years.

"The new Catwoman will be the absolute opposite of Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry's purring creations."

Riddle us this, Daily Telegraph: can casting rumors really commence before Nolan has even turned in his first draft? The British paper claims The Caped Crusader will start shooting in Vancouver early next year, another unlikely idea since Nolan has so effectively staked his Gotham City in Chicago. Still, the idea of Cher as Catwoman sounds just wild enough to work; we can't wait for Christian Bale to begin talking in his husky Batman voice only to receive a slap from an angry Catwoman, snarling, "Snap out of it!"

• Cher 'to play Catwoman' in next Batman film [Telegraph]

Not that he’s thought it so far ahead that he actually knows what he’d want to do with the Riddler, however.

“That’s impossible to answer now,” Green said. “That would take years of preparation."

We eagerly await the reel that the erstwhile David Silver will put together to convince Chris Nolan's casting office that he's the man for the job. Though Green may not yet know in which direction he wants to take his Riddler performance, might we suggest that he start from this terrifying, Roger Rabbit-ing base and work outwards?

[Photo Credit: AP]

• From 90210 To Gotham City? Brian Austin Green Makes Pitch For Riddler Casting [MTV]

1. All-Time Greatest Film on IMDB: Fanboys continue to make their voices heard this morning as nearly 50,000 voters pushed The Dark Knight to the top of IMDB's definitive list of international classics. Better even than The Shawshank Redemption, though? Well, these viewers have seen everything, so... congratulations, Christopher Nolan!

2. Backlash Begins (Critical Edition): Bad reviews (and the revolt that followed them) were one thing. But even DK admirers like us couldn't help but nod along as haters started poking the bubble:

FIlm critics were just as jazzed as the film's makers and its boyish fans, even proud to consider themselves part of the film's creation, in a way. "I think it's the critic's duty to tell people how awesome this movie is," said Insert-Pullquote Pete, of the Toulane Tribune. "Thank God there's finally a movie that audiences and critics can agree on, cause it makes our job so much easier."

3. Backlash Begins (Box-Office Edition): Citing figures that are in part "too clean," David Poland challenges the numbers and their historical importance. Not to be outdone, Variety this morning bumped the figure to $158 million just for the hell of it.

4. Oscar Hype Redux: Terry Gilliam be damned, Tom O'Neil is just doing his job this morning by recalculating DK's Oscar odds after its massive weekend: Only six the top 20 highest-grossing films of all time were nominated for Best Picture. "[T]hree won," writes O'Neil. "The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Titanic and Forrest Gump — and three got skunked: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, E.T. and Star Wars." For what it's worth, none were reviewed as consistently favorably as The Dark Knight. And certainly none of them are IMDB's Greatest! Film! Ever!

5. Christopher Nolan is the New Peter Jackson. A 38-year-old guy who started out making $40,000 neo-noirs over a year's worth of weekends off is now the anchor of the hottest franchise in town. Just part of the plan, notes The Hollywood Reporter, which today features a good look at how he did it (not to mention the hell of following up — The Prisoner, Chris? Really?).

6. Mamma Mia! Gets Buried: The stage adaptation's $27.6 million opening was the best ever for a musical. IMDB Top 250 spot: Not ranked. Care much? Us neither.

Follow the jump for their respective two cents — mostly spoiler-free for even the most casual followers of the film, and naturally among the finest criticism available anywhere online.

STV: We should probably go into this acknowledging that the film is review-proof and completely saturated with things too interesting to spoil.
STV: That said, I just thought it was pretty good.
SA: I thought it was excellent!
STV: Yeah, yeah, fine. It's fitfully brilliant, but so heavy-handed. Did I miss something?
SA: Nope. This was the summer 2008 superhero movie for people who enjoy feeling awful, and thinking about feeling awful, and expressing what makes feeling awful so gosh darn wonderful.
STV: Iron Man this is not.
SA: It's misanthropy porn. It's also the bluest superhero movie I've ever seen, in every sense of the word.
STV: Right. From the start, too — those billowing blue flames, the Hong Kong horizons, Gotham at night.
STV: And yeah, everyone's depressed as hell.
SA: But that said, I don't think a single scene passed by that I didnt feel worked. And it was a long movie.
STV: What about the story? I was lost.
SA: The story was fine. Corrupt city government. Crime infested streets.
SA: It was sort of The Departed with bat-gadgets.
STV: But the Joker shows up wanting a piece of Teflon goombah Eric Roberts, the Russians, the blacks, and a Hong Kong money-laundering syndicate.
SA: Its the Mafia Olympics!
STV: Even if Gotham City is totally corrupt, it's the most equal-opportunity corruption in history, which I guess should be commended.
SA: Speaking of the Joker, what did you think of Heath?
STV: Heath was annoying.
STV: It's not his fault. Nolan couldn't rein him in.
SA: I was prepared for him to be annoying, but I actually really enjoyed him.
SA: I mean, its The Joker! This isn't a portrait in subtlety. You want hyena cackles!
STV: But look — and this is my problem with the whole movie: The audience is overwhelmed with moralizing.
SA: Yes, I'll agree it got bogged down in speechifying.
STV: The Joker is the default "Man, this world is fucked" mouthpiece, but his actions — just his very look — defy the monologues, the hamminess.
STV: He needs an origin story like the Burton Joker, right? Who the hell is this guy?
SA: Yeah — their not committing to his backstory was a strong choice, but I'm not sure it really helped them.
SA: But I think they were trying to say, "What does it matter where he came from?" Like, what does it matter where any psychopath comes from? He's chaos. But then you have no psychological in, so he's less interesting.
STV: Alfred the Butler touches on it: "Some people just want to watch the world burn."
SA: Yeah, but that doesn't satisfy dramatically.
STV: Even that was kind of overbearing.
SA: Nolan was reaching high with this. He obviously wanted the monologues.
STV: He's a great director, though, right? I mean, this film looks, feels, sounds amazing.
SA: That's why your quibbles don't bother me. This is his ride, and it's spectacular, and if he wants his speeches about human nature, I'll listen to them.
SA: He chose great actors to deliver them.
STV: But he's so much better at subterranean truck chases and high-altitude kidnappings. I want overturned big rigs!
SA: Well, luckily there's tons of those. And 180-degree, wall-flipping Bad Pods.
STV: And the Bat-Blobile. What was that? The Batmobile was a hulking blob of scrap on wheels.
SA: It was batass.
STV: OK, give me one-line summaries of the following actors' performances: Christian Bale.
SA: Obscene caller voice.
STV: Aaron Eckhart.
SA: Boringly delicious!
STV: Maggie Gyllenhaal.
SA: Made the most of the whiny token female.
STV: Michael Caine.
SA: Should have let him out of the fluorescent Batchamber more.
STV: He's basically a cockney Jiminy Cricket serving breakfast. How about Morgan Freeman?
SA: If God and Q had a kid.
STV: Gary Oldman.
SA: He gets swallowed up in it. He's one of the best actors ever.
STV: I think he's the best thing about it.
SA: Is he?
STV: He's a guy pulled 15 different ways, very flawed, vulnerable, and at his best when things are out of his control. He gets to work when shit hits the fan, while everyone else just sort of... talks.
SA: What did you think of Batman's voice?
STV: I didn't quite get it.
SA: Me neither. It was silly.
STV: He never closes his mouth when he talks, either! It lets all the air out of the big, portentous balloon.
STV: Is Heath Oscar-worthy?
SA: He'll definitely get a nomination.
SA: I sort of think the movie itself deserves a Best Picture nomination. It's just so ambitious and epic and so expensive-looking.
STV: This movie is going to make a fortune, right? I'm calling $140 million for the weekend plus $2 billion in damage caused by rioting fans worldwide.
STV: And I am a believer in IMAX.
SA: Oh, definitely. Those scenes were so cool.
STV: Bad format for preachy screenwriter moralizing, excellent format for hospital implosions and 10-minute chase sequences.
SA: OMG — that hospital. Yeah, I really loved this movie.
STV: It's not bad. I'll stick with Iron Man.
SA: Iron Man was fun; this was a nice compliment.
STV: The Dark Knight: Nihilism for the whole family.

He bugs his eyes and licks compulsively at the gashes that extend his mouth. He tries on different voices. First he sounds like Cagney in White Heat, then slides into a prissy singsong like Al Franken's Stuart Smalley, then throws in some fruity Brando flourishes and a dash of Hannibal Lecter...I couldn't take my eyes off him, but in truth, I found the performance painful to watch. Scarier than what the Joker does to anyone onscreen is what Ledger must have been doing to himself—trying to find the center of a character without a dream of one.

• The Dark Knight [Rotten Tomatoes]
• Bat Out of Hell [New York]

In a frenzy, fans have bought so many late-night tickets for the July 18 opening of the next Batman movie that theaters in places like San Diego, Chicago, and even Eagan, Minn., are scheduling 6 a.m. screenings for those who can't get in at midnight or 3 in the morning.

Movie theaters have sometimes opened their doors at odd hours for their most highly anticipated films, say, an entry in the Star Wars series, and midnight shows have become part of the summer blockbuster ritual.

But all-night sellouts far in advance of an opening have come only with the near ubiquity of online ticket sales. Fandango.com, for instance, reports well over 1,500 wee-hour showings for The Dark Knight in theaters that typically do not open their doors before about 10 a.m.

And don't even get us started about ticket retailers worming their ways into the story. Is it July 18 yet? We feel like we're soon to hit the Batwall.

• Many Movie Theaters Decide to Leave the Bat Signal on Till Dawn [NYT]

EXT. A HIGHWAY — DAY ...

The Batmobile races off into the distance. Finally, BATMAN catches up to the JOKER's zeppelin.

JOKER
Howdy, Batman. Got time for a little... prank?

JOKER unleashes an all-out barrage of missiles, like the biggest fucking missiles you will ever see. BATMAN shoots his own back, and they all collide into each other in the middle of the highway releasing a violent explosion, and then, an explosion within that explosion, this time in slow motion, with tanks flying out of it.

Both BATMAN and JOKER eject from their vehicles, shooting themselves into helcopters. they they unleash even bigger missiles, which whizz past both of the helicopters, destroying the highway on the ground below. The action's not over yet, though, because in the distance there are still five more highways and, on top of them, a bridge.

And you know what? While we can't vouch for how Ledger's penultimate performance might have fared in the Bay biosphere (regardless of this joke script's authenticity), at this point we can't deny we'd mind living in the parallel universe where this script would not only be written, but this movie would be made.

• Christopher Nolan's 'Knight' vision [LAT]
• >
• 'The Dark Knight' [Variety]
• Michael Bay's Rejected 'The Dark Knight' Script [Spill via TOH]

[Eckhart] did say that the wounds are structurally deeper than in the comics: "There are fans on the Internet who have done artist's versions of what they think it will look like, and I can tell you this: They're thinking small; [director] Chris [Nolan] is going way farther than people think."

There were plenty of name actors lined up hoping to get the role of Two-Face, but in the end Nolan went with Eckhart because of his "complexity and this aura he has of a good man pushed too far," Nolan said. ... "The difference between Batman and Two-Face is how far they are willing to go and how they make their point," Eckhart said. "Otherwise, we're talking about vigilante crime-fighting. That's what Batman is all about. He has a strong sense of justice. And Harvey Dent has an extremely strong sense of justice. His fiancée is killed. He's horribly injured. But he is still true to himself. He's a crime fighter, he's not killing good people. He's not a bad guy, not purely."

Anyway, the new trailer online features a brief shot of Eckhart's good side, which as seen above, reveals none of the pitched grimness that we've been looking for since Nolan, Christian Bale and now Eckhart have been talking it up. In any event, we're still too emotionally wounded from last week's viral fanboy stampede to get worked up for this. The nightmares can't possibly get any worse; just give us time, Eckhart. We need time.

• Not just another pretty face in 'The Dark Knight' [LAT]

"It was punk, it was A Clockwork Orange, it was druggie. It was this kind of fantastic, anarchic look to him. This character who had absolutely no rules whatsoever," said Christian Bale, who returns as rich guy Bruce Wayne and his crime-fighting alter-ego Batman. "That's not like any Joker I've ever seen before, what I saw Heath do." ...

"What I found in watching the movie myself is that you're not looking at the actor, you're not looking at the friend, you're not looking at the colleague," [said director Christopher Nolan.] "You're looking at the Joker. ... He inhabits this character, and it's an extraordinary icon, so it's easy to enjoy it on that level, just as a great piece of acting." ...

"He came out of the bloody lift like a whirlwind," [Michael] Caine recalled. "They said, `It's your line, Michael.' I said, `What is it?' Extraordinary. It will be one of the characters of next year, the Joker as played by him."

Germain notes that previous posthumously released films featuring the likes of James Dean, Spencer Tracy and both Bruce and Brandon Lee all managed wide audiences in the wake of their stars' deaths, as unfortunate a box-office boost as a film can possibly have. But other dead stars Natalie Wood and John Candy just couldn't open, and as such, the Dark Knight hype overlords are leaving nothing to chance with Bale and Co.'s inscrutable technical readings and even a rumored viral campaign of mini-hagiographies — I AM NOT OVER YOU, HEATH LEDGER — scrawled across trees, taxis and buses citywide. Keep your eyes peeled.

• Ledger's passing stokes Joker mania [AP]

Warner is likely to alter some of its marketing campaign, which featured Ledger's image in the early going. A source close to the project says the plan all along was to start with the Joker and then segue to the image of Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face. In the film, Two-Face is in a love triangle with Rachel Dawes, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Indeed, Two-Face's significance to the movie's plot was highlighted less than two weeks before Ledger's death, when director Christopher Nolan told the LAT, "Harvey Dent is a tragic figure, and his story is the backbone of this film. The Joker, he sort of cuts through the film — he's got no story arc, he's just a force of nature tearing through. Heath has given an amazing performance in the role, it's really extraordinary." With Knight capitalizing on not just the talents of Ledger and Eckhart, but also the chillingly effective Cillian Murphy back as the Scarecrow, this latest Batman installment promises to pit the Caped Crusader against the most formidable consortium of Gotham-based baddies since Uma Thurman slinked around in a leaf-covered catsuit and Gov. Schwarzenegger made a series of incomprehensible threats involving sub-zero temperatures.

• The Dark Knight Without Heath Ledger [Slate]