I like her. I think she'll do well under Nolan's direction.

Anne Hathaway Is Your New Catwoman

by: Will Leitch

Crazy rumors about the cast for "The Dark Knight Rises," the third of director Christopher Nolan's Batman films, have been going on for so long that Vulture's Lane Brown gleefully made fun of the phenomenon seven months ago. At that point, the following human beings had been connected to the sequel: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Johnny Depp, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Cher, Eddie Murphy, Rachel Weisz, Miley Cyrus, Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox. This is a natural by-product of the Internet and of the massive success of "The Dark Knight," which Nolan turned into one of the biggest hits of all time, in some effect, through the casting of the late Heath Ledger as The Joker. This is the most prestigous, profitable franchise in Hollywood, and everyone wants a part.

And today, for the first time, after all the rumors have dissipated, we know who the villains in "The Dark Knight Rises" will be. Warner Bros just announced that Anne Hathaway will play Selina Kyle, and that Tom Hardy, of Nolan's "Inception," will play Bane. Christian Bale will be back as Batman, and Nolan has said this will be his final Batman film.

Hathaway was one of the many actresses rumored to be auditioning for the film last week (a group that reportedly included Jessica Biel and Keira Knightley), and apparently she won over Nolan. (That she's at the apex of her career, with her Oscar co-hosting duties next month, doesn't hurt either.) This is the first time we've learned that Selina Kyle -- who is more commonly known as "Catwoman" -- will be a part of the film. It is definitely worth noting that the Warner Bros. release never says the word "Catwoman." That could mean that Hathaway will be playing Kyle before she turns into Catwoman, or that they're trying to establish some distance from Halle Berry's widely panned performance in her "Catwoman" spinoff in 2004, or that the studio is trying to play a little coy with the announcement of an iconic Batman love-interest-cum-villain.

Of course, Berry's not even the most famous movie Catwoman: That would be Michelle Pfeiffer, who was the highlight of the underrated "Batman Returns, Tim Burton's last film in the franchise, back in 1992. In that version, Kyle, a sheepish secretary, becomes Catwoman by being brought back to life -- after being murdered by Christopher Walken -- by an alley-full of stray cats. But in the comics, she's a street criminal with a tragic past similar to Batman's, a Robin Hood sort who steals from the city's wealthy and gives it to the destitute. That seems a more likely direction for Nolan's morally ambiguous Batman universe. And, obviously, the notion of Anne Hathaway in a Catwoman suit is not necessarily a negative one either.

This isn't the first time Hardy's Bane has been in a Batman film, though his appearance was far less memorable. In 1997's much-mocked "Batman & Robin," Bane was played by the late wrestler Jeep Swenson. In that film, he was Poison Ivy's bodyguard, but did little more than grunt and flex. The DC Comics version of Bane is far more layered. There, Bane is another Batman character who was doomed from birth. He was born and raised in a South American prison -- the law there required his father's life sentence for murder to be served by his son, which hardly seems fair -- he becomes a body-building strongman, along with a superior intelligence wrought in the prison library, simply to survive behind bars. He ended up running the prison's inmates, which led the threatened warden to force him to become a test subject on an experiment with a substance called "Venom." The venom makes him supernaturally strong, but he's required to take it every 12 hours, or he'll die. Eventually he escapes prison and wreaks doomed havoc on the streets of Gotham. In a way, this character is not all that different from the character Hardy played in "Bronson," Nicolas Winding Refn's 2008 film about England's most notorious prison inmate. This is certainly what Nolan had in mind by casting him.

It's not known whether the rest of the "Dark Knight" cast -- Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman -- will return for the film, but they are expected to. It will be released in June 2012, which should give everyone plenty of time to come up with a whole new roll call of rumors, now that this news dispenses with all the old ones.

I like it.

I like Anne Hathaway as well!

Mee-ow!

She's really grown as a performer. She is a beautiful and talented young woman, and I think she'll be helluva hot as Catwoman.

Seth Rogen as The Riddler.

Joseph Gordon Levitt as Robin.

Woah this is exciting! I Tom Hardy is really cool. Can't wait! Now I hope they don't do any reboots after this one heh.

They will. The money is too much, too essential to the studio's books and too reliable of an old whore for WB to be simply retired. All those and more capitalist metaphors.

Hell Marvel is doing there best to pump out SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN prequels for this and next year. Like people actually want them. Do you want to know why Magneto and Professor X hate each other? Do you really want to know how awkward High School was for Spider-Man? I got the ideas the first time around, I don't need elaboration.

For that matter, the 2011 "Cape Crop" doesn't intrigue me all that much. Or in translation, not at all so far from what I've seen. THOR and GREEN LANTERN are both helmed by directors I like (Kenneth Branagh, Martin Campbell) even if they're both inconsistent as fuck filmmakers.

But either those trailers were so formulaic and dull, or its the properties themselves but I just can't give a shit about either at the moment. I'm sure the THOR people are happy that they might benefit greatly from Natalie Portman's casting if indeed she wins the Oscar.

I am kinda peeved that they are redoing Spidermnan. I thought we already go to see what it was like in high school in the other movie? The only thing that I am pleased with is that they made Gwen Stacy his first girlfriend like in the comics, which they didn't do in the original movies. Also they said this Spiderman was going to be "darker and edgier" I really can't help but just roll my eyes. I'd rather they continued with a new X-Men after that horrible third sequel instead. It's typical every time a sequel gets screwed up, it's like "well let's just reboot the whole thing" instead of making an effort to fix what they got. The same thing happened with Superman Returns too, which I happen to like, but they didn't know where they were going with it, so now they'll start over with new people and hope for the best :S