Saturday's conference was held at Sony Studios. At the event PGA executive director Vance Van Petten asked Nolan is he is planning a fourth Batman film.
"No" was the answer that Nolan gave. When he began working on the script with his brother, he told Jonathan,
“I don’t want to save anything.”
He acknowledged Richard Donner's
Superman as having an influence upon his pitch for
Batman Begins. As Donner's version of the Man of Steel strayed from the comic book stories and was still quite successful.
"I explained the potential of what was exciting to me. There really had not been an origin story about this extraordinary figure in an ordinary world."
Instead of worrying about pleasing fans of the comic books Nolan focuses most of his effort on telling the best story.
“The source material is irrelevant. The challenge with Batman is to find what is a believable character. You put your stamp on it.”
Nolan is not oblivious to the fans of the comics either, as he calls Batman a "classic brand."
"You're really working with something that belongs to the audience."
FILM vs. DIGITAL
“There’s a huge danger in all of this. If you are looking strictly at production cost, then you would use digital. But for the best image, it is still film.”
“The problem with the push to digital is it has been given a consumer aspect. It’s not what is best for the film. I don’t want to be the R and D department. I don’t have any interest in the research into electronics. What interests me is to use the best technology and that is film.”
“When it is as good as film and it makes sense I’ll be open to it. But (at present) it’s not good enough.”
For people that aren't aware of the economics involved with film and digital it all comes down to a precious metal, silver. It is used in the film process therefore when the price of silver started to climb ten years ago from five dollars an ounce to today being over twenty-five dollars an ounce that caused quite a problem. With silver being five times as expensive as it was ten years ago you can understand why producers and studios have been trying to sell the switch to digital.
In a new
Deadline article they report that studios distribution of 35 mm film to theaters will cease domestically by the end of 2013, and the global markets by the end of 2015. Looks like Nolan and other filmmakers will have to embrace digital no matter what.
Quotes from this article are provided by Variety & The Hollywood Reporter.
The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters July 20th 2012 and stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth, Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, Tom Hardy as Bane, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate.