BATMAN 3, SUPERMAN, THE HOBBIT Update

Quickly, because I find press releases boring and generally unreliable especially when announcing long term plans, Warner Brothers and IMAX have struck a major deal to bring up to 20 WB films to the biggest of screens all by the year 2013. Here's the relevant bit of info...

“Warner Bros. and IMAX also plan to release an additional 15 films over the course of 2011, 2012 and 2013, including Gravity, Dark Shadows, Fury Road, Batman 3, and Superman.”

The update is that the first Hobbit film, directed by Guillermo Del Toro has been nailed down to a December 2012 release and is included as part of that package of films. The follow-up will release exactly one year later.

The biggest news is that this gives us something of ballpark date for the third installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman epic, and frankly the only real confirmation of it's existence. Up to this point any information on it has been kept totally under wraps. We're still a long way off so trying to nail down even an estimated release date is premature.

Then there's Superman, which has been languishing in development Hell for a few years now. This could serve as an indicator that some real movement has taken place on reviving the Man of Steel's film franchise. The only thing we really know so far is that Nolan will be serving as a 'godfather' of sorts but not actually directing it.

Lastly, it might not amount to anything. This isn't a Warner Brothers press release. It's an IMAX one. Granted, I doubt that IMAX would list a bunch of movies that they don't have any sort of confirmation on but would I be totally surprised if they did? Not really.  As usual we'll just have to wait and see when the real news starts flying about these movies.