From avclub, The time for rumors and speculation is, alas, at an end: Anne Hathaway will play Catwoman and Tom Hardy will play Bane in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. Of course, the press release never mentions the “cat” word, saying only that Hathaway will play “Selina Kyle,” suggesting that the film could be focused primarily on her origin story, or that it’s trying to preserve the surprise of Selina’s transformation into Catwoman from those select few people who would be interested in seeing a Batman film yet have somehow avoided finding out that they are one and the same. In which case, spoiler alert, we guess. As for Hardy’s role, Bane is well known in Bat-lore as the venom-addicted super-soldier who snapped Batman’s spine in the “Knightfall” saga, setting off one of the grimmest story arcs in the comic’s history. But seeing as there’s no indication of any sudden incorporations of Robin, let alone any brainwashed grad students named Jean-Paul, something tells us Nolan isn’t going there this time. (Although that would be a pretty cruel way to end his trilogy.)
