The rumor mill keeps churning on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. What is a Batman film without a love interest? Even better, what is a Batman film without a villain? Deadline claims that sources are telling them that Christopher Nolan will be meeting with six lovely ladies to fill in additional roles to the growing cast of his third Batman project. One of these ladies will become a love interest and one will portray a villain.
The “sexy six” consists of a well established group of actresses, each with their own very different styles. Anne Hathaway, Kiera Knightley, Blake Lively, Natalie Portman, Naomi Watts, and Rachel Weisz have all been mentioned on this list.
With the death of Maggie Gyhllenhaal/Katie Holme’s character, Rachel Dawes, in The Dark Knight (everyone and their mom has seen this movie, if this is a spoiler to you then you live in a cave), there will have to be a new love interest to fill Bruce Wayne’s broken heart. But what is unexpected is a possible female villain. There are a few to choose from, but every female villain has proved to be a great threat to the Dark Knight himself. Poison Ivy, Harley Quiin, Talia al Ghul and of course Catwoman could all be potential great characters in Nolan’s next film. Talia has been linked to Bane and many fans speculate Bane could be a potential villain with the casting of Tom Hardy who was announced last month.
I would love to see Harley Quinn take over the Joker’s reign, or perhaps the tag team of Harley and Poison Ivy from the animated series. Talia al Ghul would also be a close assumption with her father Ra’s al Ghul being killed off in Batman Begins. I could really see Naomi Watts, Rachel Weisz, and Natalie Portman fulfilling either of these possibilities of the love or the villain. With Lively already in the Green Lantern movie, it could conflict with the DC Universe. Anne Hathaway really doesn’t seem like a Nolan leading lady, but imagine her as Harley Quinn for a moment…… just look at that smile. Knightley has done well in some serious roles such as Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, and Nolan does seem to like British actors so I can definitely see her as a potential love interest.
But these are just all my speculations and Deadline will just be feeding into my geekisms to stir my pot. These could all just be hubbubaloo and be completely false. But take it as it is, but if these are to be true casting rumors, who would you suspect to fulfill these roles? Let’s see how many photoshop images of Natalie Portman in a Catwoman suit we can dig up within the next week.
The Dark Knight Rises comes to theaters on July 20, 2012 from Warner Bros.