Michael Caine tells MTV: No Johnny Depp in the next BATMAN film

Remember last year’s Toronto Film Festival, when the always-quotable Sir Michael Caine joked that Johnny Depp would play The Riddler (and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the Penguin) in the next Batman film? MTV’s reporter mistakenly reported Caine’s joke as a serious scoop from an insider. Whoops! Warner Bros. was none too pleased with that mix-up. Now, a year later, the always-busy Sir Michael returned to the Toronto Film Festival and sat down with MTV’s Josh Horowitz (who was not the reporter guilty of last year’s snafu) to set the record straight.

There is still no news at all regarding a Batman sequel, Caine said–there’s not even a script yet, no one has been cast, and director Christopher Nolan is too busy with Inception to think about a follow-up to The Dark Knight. “There is nobody, there’s no script, there’s nothing,” Caine told MTV News. “It can’t possibly be made before 2011 because Inception is such a big picture.”

Still, MTV’s Horowitz can’t resist asking Caine to speculate: since the sequel is still a blank slate, wouldn’t it be great if they could have Johnny Depp as The Riddler? “Johnny Depp is great in anything, but there is no Johnny Depp in this Batman,” Caine replied with a smile. “They tell me in no uncertain terms.”

You can read more about Michael Caine’s comments on the Zone’s News & Views forum. To read the MTV article, CLICK HERE. –Part-Time Poet