Now that The Dark Knight has been out for over three week­ends, I will begin to splat­ter more spoiler-ish infor­ma­tion into posts as we begin to dis­cuss “Bat­man 3″, or what­ever name we can derive for the next film.

Christo­pher Nolan hasn’t yet signed on for a third Bat­man movie, and his screen­writer John Nolan is still on the set of Ter­mi­na­tor Sal­va­tion. Until the key play­ers sign-on, includ­ing David Goyer, ANY cast­ing rumors that you see are most likely wish­lists or arti­cles look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on The Dark Knight’s popularity.

Tak­ing this point into con­sid­er­a­tion, I now present you the three main rum­blings that are spread­ing across the internet:

Angelina Jolia as Catwoman

This rumor seems to have orig­i­nated from an NY Daily News arti­cle which reck­ons that Angelina Jolie should play Cat­woman in the next Bat­man incar­na­tion — or so for­mer Cat­woman and ‘Bat­man icon’ Julie New­mar thinks.

“Angelina would own the part. My indus­try friends tell me [she] has made inquiries about the role. I can under­stand how it would piqué her inter­est. Cat­woman is Batman’s one true love. She’s tremen­dously pop­u­lar with women because she’s both a hero­ine and a vil­lain­ess. When you look at the stag­ger­ing box office of this cur­rent film, which actress wouldn’t want to jump in?”

Although this goes against Nolan and Goyer’s incli­na­tion NOT to bring back the humanoid feline.

Johnny Depp as The Riddler

Mean­while, the supri­ous and ter­ri­ble National Enquirer, via Jake and Hol​ly​wood​.com are tip­ping Johnny Depp to play The Rid­dler. That’s the extent of the news feature.

“(Pro­duc­ers) are con­vinced that the role of the Rid­dler is per­fect for Depp. Johnny’s a pro. He’ll be able to take direc­tion from direc­tor Chris Nolan and still make the char­ac­ter his own.”

(SPOILER: I’ve also read rumors that Depp would be a good sub­sti­tute for The Joker should they wish to bring him back in some capacity.)

Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man as The Penguin

The tabloid also thinks:

“And what bet­ter Pen­guin is there than Philip Sey­mour Hoffman.”

I can guar­an­tee that come 12 months, none of these pre­dic­tions will be close. Fan reac­tions to these rumors are also entirely incon­se­quen­tial — we all remem­ber how masses reacted when Heath Ledger was cast as The Joker.