Riddle Me This, Batman: Is Joseph Gordon-Levitt Your Next Foe?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's long, slow march to stardom will be getting a turbo boost, if rumors that he's in talks to play The Riddler in "Batman 3" are true.

“Chris really dug Joseph [as an actor],” a source close to the director tells HollywoodLife.com exclusively ( by way of The Playlist). “There was a joke at first between them [on the set of 'Inception'] that Joseph wanted to read for 'Batman 3' and things heated up as filming continued.”

Yeah, we've never heard of Hollywood Life, either, but it's owned by the same folks behind Deadline and Movieline, and it's got Bonnie Fuller's name on the banner, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that it's true.

The idea that Chris Nolan would like JGL is perfectly plausible, and like many directors, Nolan likes to bring back actors with whom he's worked before -- Christian Bale and Michael Caine, for example.

Gordon-Levitt worked with Heath Ledger in 1999's "10 Things I Hate About You," and probably noticed what starring as a super-villain did for his career, so why wouldn't he lobby Nolan for a role in "Batman 3"?

But it's important to remember one thing: the script for "B3" isn't even finished, nobody knows for certain which villain will face off with the Caped Crusader, making casting rather difficult.

Nolan has already said that he won't recast The Joker, and Two-Face is dead, so that leaves The Riddler, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin and Scarecrow  (played by the great Cillian Murphy in the first two films) as the obvious choices for "Batman 3." Mr. Freeze and the Penguin are both kinda dopey and Scarecrow as played Murphy doesn't really have the legs to be a main player.

So that leaves The Riddler, aka Edward Nigma, "a criminal mastermind who has a strange compulsion to challenge Batman by leaving clues to his crimes in the form of riddles and puzzles. Recently, he has seemingly abandoned his criminal lifestyle and has opted to utilize his skills to turn a profit as a freelance investigator," according to the DC Comics Database.

That sounds like a pretty entertaining foil for the Dark Knight, no?

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