Christopher Nolan has fuelled speculation the next Batman movie will be his last by confirming the new film will be a "conclusion" to the Caped Crusader's story.
The moviemaker revived the Batman franchise with Christian Bale taking the lead role in Batman Begins in 2005 and returned for 2008's The Dark Knight. He is now preparing to take charge of his third movie in the series which will complete his trilogy.
And although Nolan admits his screenwriter brother, Jonathan Nolan, is "struggling" to write the script, he's looking forward to concluding the movie series.
He tells the Los Angeles Times, "(Jonathan is) now doing the hard work. My brother is writing a script for me and we'll wait to see how it turns out... He's struggling to put it together into the epic story that you want it to be.
"Without getting into specifics, the key thing that makes the third film a great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story. And in viewing it as the finishing of a story rather than infinitely blowing up the balloon and expanding the story. We have a great ensemble, that's one of the attractions of doing another film, since we've been having a great time for years.
"I'm very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we've done with the characters. My brother has come up with some pretty exciting stuff. Unlike the comics, these things don't go on forever in film and viewing it as a story with an end is useful. Viewing it as an ending, that sets you very much on the right track about the appropriate conclusion and the essence of what tale we're telling. And it harkens back to that priority of trying to find the reality in these fantastic stories. That's what we do."
