Is Batman 3 To Be Shot In IMAX? Will There Be A Catwoman?

Movies — September 9, 2009 at 15:18 — no comments

First up is Ain’t It Cool News, risking it’s geek rep on a rumor that Christopher Nolan is planning to shoot the entire third chapter of his Batman series with full IMAX cameras (no, not the fake digital variety). While we don’t have any idea if this is true, the idea shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, as Nolan has said that he’s wanted to shoot an entire film using IMAX for years.

VIA SF:

Before The Dark Knight, he even shot a couple test shots on The Prestige using the IMAX camera to get a sense of that the issues were going to be. And for The Dark Knight, Nolan originally planned to shoot five of the scenes in IMAX but he kept increasing the use of the cameras through out the production. But working with IMAX cameras aren’t easy. The cameras are much heavier, and normal camera equipment had to be modified to be able to handle the weight. Also, the cameras only allow for a maximum of two and a half minutes film load. Another big problem, made obvious by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is the amount of design and render time to get the visual effects to look as clear as the rest of the 70mm image. Here is a quote from Nolan from our roundtable interview at The Dark Knight junket:

We found ways and we planned ways of getting around for example, the short load-times which is you know, we would just swap one camera for another when it ran out of film and that kind of thing,” explained director Christopher Nolan. “Generally with action sequences which is mostly what we were shooting you really rarely roll for more than ten seconds for example so it tends not to really be a factor. Shooting a dialog scene with an IMAX camera would be a bigger challenge because of the noise of the camera and the short length of the loads and so forth but we got better and better at it, we had a terrific crew, a lot of our camera mounts and things were 35 millimeter they were ones they’re built to withstand enormous abuse, so they can take the weight of a much larger camera.

Dialogue scenes would definitely be the biggest concern, but I’m sure solutions have been explored since the production of The Dark Knight. Of course, this is all but a rumor. Everyone involved in the production has recently insisted that no deal has yet been signed for a third Batman film. But that might just be the company line, who knows?

The other big rumor to hit today comes from UK’s gossip newspaper The Sun, which claims that not only is a Dark Knight sequel being prepped, it will begin shooting next year for a 2011 release, and will star Megan Fox as Catwoman. The only strange part is that The Sun doesn’t use the typical rumor language of “my source tells me…” but instead reports it as fact: “MEGAN FOX has signed up to play Catwoman in the next Batman movie.” Okay, I might be able to buy the first part of that report, but Megan Fox as Catwoman? Does anyone actually believe that Christopher Nolan would cast Megan Fox in any of his movies? I’m sure that there is no truth to this rumor what-so-ever, and here is why.

Clark Kent says: Today I’m a little bit lazy, so excuse me for any errors, but if you want the rest of these Batman rumors to whet your appetite, click here for more!