Christopher Nolan says he's tentative on Dark Knight sequel

The blitz of sequel rumors that followed The Dark Knight’s release this summer have been silenced a number of times, mostly because director Christopher Nolan spent the second half of his summer off the coast of Florida with his family. And in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, Nolan, back home, confirmed that he hasn’t decided on any direction for Batman—or if he wants to return to the franchise at all.

“Is there a story that’s going to keep me emotionally invested for the couple of years that it will take to make another one? That’s the overriding question,” he said. “On a more superficial level, I have to ask the question: How many good third movies in a franchise can people name?”

Nolan said he was stunned by the movie’s furious success—“it’s terrific, but at the same time it’s a little abstract, the numbers are so big,” he told the paper—but he also cautioned that he never thought ahead to a potential sequel. “I only deal with one film at a time. I find myself sort of protesting this issue a lot. We’ve never attempted to save anything for a sequel or set up anything for a sequel.”

Perhaps in anticipation of fanboy corrections, Nolan said that for him, the Joker card introduced at the end of Batman Begins wasn’t a sequel lead-in as much as a gesture that the character had been established for the future. The Dark Knight ends with a thematically similar scene that portends very different years ahead for Batman (not to mention an ambiguous end for the Joker), but it does even less to forecast a potential direction for the series headed forward.

Nolan also suggested he would direct another movie first even if he did return, and that it wouldn’t necessarily be a small one. “One of the things I got such a thrill from on The Dark Knight was shooting on IMAX and creating that massive scale and achieving that larger-than-life quality,” he said. "I'm drawn in both directions now."

Related links:
News: Dark Knight returns to theaters in Jan. for Oscar push
News: New Dark Knight sequel rumors shot down almost instantly
News: Following The Dark Knight's success, what villain now?

Got a news tip for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.