Corona | Coming Attractions

When a movie comes as frontloaded for rumor and interest as Christopher Nolan's third Batman movie, any rumor, no matter how small or trivial, will get examined under a huge magnifying glass.

The latest bit of gossip is that Tom Hardy, the guy that stole part of the show in Inception, will play a lesser known criminal from Batman's rogues gallery, Dr. Hugo Strange. In the comics Strange is an eccentric, a psychologist that takes an extreme interest in learning the identity of Batman. Strange manages to find out that Bruce Wayne likes to dress up as a giant bat and bust bad guys' heads at night, but instead of telling others about it, Strange takes his investigation a step further and starts to dress up as Batman to see what it's like to be him. Another head case is loose in Gotham but this time Batman's adversary knows his secret identity, and could at any time reveal it.

The site that broke the story first has a decent track record of breaking snippets of news concerning The Dark Knight Rises. We know for certain that Hardy has a part in the movie but officially it's not been said if he's playing a bad guy or a good guy. Introducing a character like Hugo Strange into the Nolanverse of Batfilms seems like the next logical step to make, and with the past scores that the Batman News website has had, it's looking likely that Bruce Wayne will meet a new doctor in the next film.