Let’s stop calling the next Batman film Batman 3, shall we? Let’s just call it the next Batman film - or TNBF, if you want. That’ll do. The Batman films didn’t start with Begins, you know. Not nearly.

IGN have discovered a tiny crumb of info on TNBF that is bound to fuel speculation. According to their detective work, the only screenwriter formally attached to the project is Christopher Nolan.

So, while that leaves David Goyer and Jonathan Nolan on the bench, it sort-of formalizes Nolan’s involvement in the development process.

IGN’s source was an official document from Warner Bros. to “a guild”, presumably the WGA. Studios are obliged to inform all guilds with the work lists of those toiling on their projects, and somehow one of these was intercepted by Bothans on the IGN friendlist.

This suggests to me that the project is at the sketchiest of sketchy treatment phases right now and I’ll speculate that another writer or writers will be named once any fleshing out takes place and, heck, I’ll go out on a ledge and say this other writer will be Jonathan Nolan and this time, David Goyer won’t be on board. Idle speculation, that’s all. That’s all there is to do at the moment.

In other TNBF non-news, Batman-on-Film have alleged that Nolan’s deal for Inception includes a Batman clause, shackling him to the cash cow that laid a giant egg for at least that one more go around. This claim has already been given the old non-denial denial at MTV but the one-for-them, one-for-me negotiation doesn’t seem entirely improbable. What does derail the claim a little is that Batman-on-Film name David and Jonathan and not Christopher as formally engaged writers, suggesting the exact opposite of IGN’s evidence.