Nolan talks Superman and Batman 3

Good news, everyone! No, sorry, nothing Futurama related, we just had a feeling and went with it.

So, reports of Christopher Nolan’s involvement in the being-written Superman movie, rumoured to be titled Man Of Steel (yes, it’s still a rumour), were denied by DC Entertainment a few weeks back. But now Nolan himself has confirmed that go-to comic book geek David Goyer is currently writing the script based on a story idea cracked by the duo.

Nolan tells The LA Times that Goyer pitched him a few Superman movie ideas when they were stuck for where to take Batman 3 .

Says he:

“It’s very exciting, we have a fantastic story. And we feel we can do it right. We know the milieu, if you will, we know the genre and how to get it done right…[it] is a way of approaching the story I’ve never seen before that makes it incredibly exciting.

“I wanted to get [ producer and wife ] Emma and I involved in shepherding the project right away and getting it to the studio and getting it going in an exciting way.

“We’re approaching it in a not dissimilar way [ to the Batman films ] in terms of trying to find an incredible story in a way that audiences can engage with it the way they engage with contemporary action films.”

Nolan wouldn’t confirm if he was tempted to take Superman on as a directing gig. But seeing as Richard Donner’s original film is what got him interested in Batman , we bet his palms are feeling a little itchy for the super-camera.

Meanwhile, brother Jonathan Nolan is “now doing hard work” on the Batman 3 script, working from a story idea broken by Chris and Goyer. And it looks like it’s a trilogy closer. Says Chris:

“The key thing that makes the third film a great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story. And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story…

“I’m very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we’ve done with the characters. My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff. Unlike the comics, these thing don’t go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful.

“Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we’re telling.

But even if Chris Nolan now has his fingers in two comic book franchise pies, don’t expect anything like a Bat/Supes crossover. “Each serves to the internal logic of the story,” he says. “They have nothing to do with each other.”

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Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.