I thought we were done with the crazy Batman 3 rumors, but it seems like the recent release of the teaser trailer for Christopher Nolan’s next film, Inception, has excited the rumor mill.

First up is Ain’t It Cool News, risking it’s geek rep on a rumor that Christopher Nolan is planning to shoot the entire third chapter of his Batman series with full IMAX cameras (no, not the fake digital variety). While we don’t have any idea if this is true, the idea shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, as Nolan has said that he’s wanted to shoot an entire film using IMAX for years.

Before The Dark Knight, he even shot a couple test shots on The Prestige using the IMAX camera to get a sense of that the issues were going to be. And for The Dark Knight, Nolan originally planned to shoot five of the scenes in IMAX but he kept increasing the use of the cameras through out the production. But working with IMAX cameras aren’t easy. The cameras are much heavier, and normal camera equipment had to be modified to be able to handle the weight. Also, the cameras only allow for a maximum of two and a half minutes film load. Another big problem, made obvious by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is the amount of design and render time to get the visual effects to look as clear as the rest of the 70mm image. Here is a quote from Nolan from our roundtable interview at The Dark Knight junket:

We found ways and we planned ways of getting around for example, the short load-times which is you know, we would just swap one camera for another when it ran out of film and that kind of thing,” explained director Christopher Nolan. “Generally with action sequences which is mostly what we were shooting you really rarely roll for more than ten seconds for example so it tends not to really be a factor. Shooting a dialog scene with an IMAX camera would be a bigger challenge because of the noise of the camera and the short length of the loads and so forth but we got better and better at it, we had a terrific crew, a lot of our camera mounts and things were 35 millimeter they were ones they’re built to withstand enormous abuse, so they can take the weight of a much larger camera.

Dialogue scenes would definitely be the biggest concern, but I’m sure solutions have been explored since the production of The Dark Knight. Of course, this is all but a rumor. Everyone involved in the production has recently insisted that no deal has yet been signed for a third Batman film. But that might just be the company line, who knows?

The other big rumor to hit today comes from UK’s gossip newspaper The Sun, which claims that not only is a Dark Knight sequel being prepped, it will begin shooting next year for a 2011 release, and will star Megan Fox as Catwoman. The only strange part is that The Sun doesn’t use the typical rumor language of “my source tells me…” but instead reports it as fact: “MEGAN FOX has signed up to play Catwoman in the next Batman movie.” Okay, I might be able to buy the first part of that report, but Megan Fox as Catwoman? Does anyone actually believe that Christopher Nolan would cast Megan Fox in any of his movies? I’m sure that there is no truth to this rumor what-so-ever, and here is why.

Ellen Page and Marion Cotillard make up the female leads in his latest film Inception. Cotillard won an Oscar, and Page was nominated for one. Maggie Gyllnhaal might have been the weakest link in The Dark Knight’s main cast, but she’s critically acclaimed and has been nominated for two Golden Globes and two Independent Spirit Awards in the last six years. And The Prestige featured Scarlett Johansson in a time when she was nominated for four Golden Globes in the period of just over two years. Point is, I don’t believe that Nolan would even consider someone like Megan Fox, who is great to look at, but not much more.

And the fact that this rumor comes from an unreliable news source like The Sun, doesn’t help the argument. And we’re talking about an article that uses stupid puns (”I have a strong feline she is the purrfect choice for the part”) and is written by someone who goes on to offer his (or her?) assistance getting Fox into the super tight wardrobe (talk about professional journalism).

I don’t believe that Nolan has even signed on to Batman 3 at this point, nevermind picked characters or begun casting, so I doubt that any of this is true, at this point. But for fun, lets go over the scientifically accurate estimated odds that some of these crazy rumors could actually happen:

Estimated Chance of Megan Fox being in Batman 3: 2.5%

Estimated Chance of Batman 3 beginning production in 2010: 58.2%

If Nolan Makes Batman 3, Estimated Chance He Will Shoot Entirely Using IMAX Cameras: 68.3%

Update: And yes, for those of you who didn’t get it, this is a joke… there are no scientifically accurate estimated odds

Fox Catwoman photoshop via: badtaste