No Camp For Caped Crusader

Any film fan who has a hard time thinking about Batman without recalling the horrors inflicted by Batman & Robin, can rest assured that The Caped Crusader is now in safer hands. British director Christopher Nolan, who is taking the helm for Batman: Intimidation revealed to Variety this week that his plans for the Dark Knight are about as far away from the camped up Clooney version as humanly possible. Nolan, who'll have a $150million budget at his disposal, plans to take the story back to its roots. 'I felt like doing the origins story of the character, which is a story that's never been told before,' Nolan explains. 'The world of Batman is that of grounded reality.' Unlike the worlds created by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher, Nolan's will be 'a recognizable, contemporary reality against which an extraordinary heroic figure arises.' Screenwriter David Goyer is aiming to make the character of Bruce Wayne much more sympathetic and interesting. 'If we're successful, the thing that will be talked about a lot and on what we worked on the hardest is that the audience will really care about Bruce Wayne and not just Batman. It doesn't matter how much you spend on special effects -- if it feels hollow, no one gives a damn.' One nugget of information that'll thrill UK fans of the series is that Warner Bros are hoping to film part of the movie on location here in Britain, with London standing in for parts of Gotham City. 'Gotham will seem like this great city in a contemporary world and will be created through various cities,' Nolan says. 'We are trying to avoid a villagey feel for Gotham, as it starts to get claustrophobic.'