Christopher Nolan did a little Dark Knight Blu-Ray release event where the press was wined and dined (ie, Oscar buzz was courted), and he dropped some non-hints about the third Batman movie. Nobody seemed to get much villain talk out of him, and he shot down the idea of doing the whole movie in IMAX. He Batusi’ed a bit around what the status of Batman 3 (or The Dark Knight 2) was:

“I don’t know why [third films are] hard to do,” Nolan says. “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.”

Nolan says he is jotting notes and doing some rough outlines for a third story, but he hasn’t yet found anything he’s willing to commit to film, despite Warner Bros.’ eagerness to get a new film underway.

“It was obvious when the box office was so big ($530 million domestically) that we had underestimated how ready fans were to reboot the franchise,” he says. “The worst thing you could do now that you’ve gotten the plane back in the air is mess up the landing.”

That all comes from USA Today.

Here’s an idea: why not stick with the idea of making The Dark Knight 2; ie considering Batman Begins to be a Hobbit-like prequel? The improvement between that deeply flawed first film and this summer’s blockbuster is huge. If there’s some psychological thing about ‘third movies,’ simply don’t make this a third movie.

At any rate, I don’t expect Nolan to return to Batman before getting another movie out of his system. Patience is a virtue on this one, Batfans.

So that’s your latest The Dark Knight sequel non-news. Expect a fresh batch next week, when David Goyer does press for his new film The Unborn!