Ah, the UK press, where you can advertise just how poorly sourced a story is right up there in the headline. The indispensable Vulture points to an almost certainly untrue story in the Telegraph that reveals "Cher 'to play Catwoman' in next Batman film... it has been claimed." The source for this magnificently improbable scoop is "a studio executive," which I can only assume means someone who works at a studio other than Warner Brothers and is trying to put a very early damper on the box office receipts of Christopher Nolan's anticipated Dark Knight sequel.
The story also reports the considerably more likely (and certainly more widespread) nugget that Johnny Depp will appear as the Riddler, though skips its co-rumor that Philip Seymour Hoffman will play the Penguin. No word yet on who might one day star as the Mad Hatter, though it seems a role tailor-made for Tom Cruise.
Update: There goes my innocence. I've discovered that in addition to the Mad Hatter being crazy (which was the reason for the Tom Cruise crack), it's lately been hinted that he's also a pedophile (which was not the reason). It does, though, seem that he's a character could be sewn seamlessly into Nolan's vision of Gotham.
--Christopher Orr