The Dark Knight sequel rumours take flight...After racking up box office receipts of almost a billion dollars worldwide, it seems inconceivable that there won’t be a sequel to The Dark Knight. So we've got a rundown of the Bat rumours currently in circulation.

The movie – the second most successful after Titanic in US cinema history and fourth in the world – is seemingly too much of a cinematic juggernaut (and cash cow) for the accountants to bring to a halt.

Of course, the internet rumour-mill has been overheating with conjecture and rumour about The Dark Knight 2…so it is our solemn duty to help you sort out the meaty wheat from the speculative chaff.

THE MOVIE: Rumour has it that a screenplay is already being worked on by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer…although none have confirmed anything.  However, DK executive producer Michael Uslan has said that he expects the third movie to come out in 2011 after Nolan takes some time out for other projects. “It’s one of those deals where if I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he told New Jersey’s Courier Post.

"It's not me spreading the rumours, sir."THE STUDIO: Warner Brothers – rather unsurprisingly – are extremely keen for the Dark Knight to rise again and have confirmed negotiations with the director. “We’ve been talking to Chris Nolan and what we have to do is get him in the right place and have him tell us what he thinks the notion might be for a great story, but Chris did a great job and we’d love to have him come back and do another one,” said Warners boss Alan Horn. “Also, I think the fans expect that – they want us to make a terrific movie – we have to give them another great movie.“

The DIRECTOR: Dark Knight and Batman Begins helmer Christopher Nolan has remained frustratingly non-committal although he has floated the idea that it would be a challenge to make a third movie that defied industry tradition and was successful. “If the story is there, everything is possible,” he said. Meanwhile, Watchmen director Zach Snyder has opined that he’d like to see Frank Miller’s graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns brought to the big screen with an ageing Caped Crusader finding fighting crime tough.

BATMAN: Christian Bale’s definitive performance means he is pretty much the only choice to play The Dark Knight.  “I would like very much to complete a trilogy,” he said. “And I think that knowing the story of The Dark Knight, it leaves you anticipating something that really can get very, very interesting for a third. Now, the question would be: Is Chris going to be doing it? Because to me I find it tricky to imagine working on it without it being a collaboration with Chris.”

"Please no! Not Eddie Murphy as the Riddler?"THE RIDDLER:  With the return of Heath Ledger’s Joker tragically no longer an option (alhough the character is apparently still considered viable), one of the most obvious villainous candidates would be a reinvention of the Riddler, last played by Jim Carrey in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever. Michael Caine, who plays Batman’s butler Alfred, mischievously suggested a Warner Bros executive had told him that Johnny Depp was lined up. Intriguingly, Depp responded that – although the rumour was totally unfounded – the idea would be “fun”. Another candidate for the role – according to The Sun – was the much-derided proposal that Eddie Murphy had been cast.

THE PENGUIN: Another internet-circulated piece of ill-supported trivia – again traced back to Mr Caine - was that Philip Seymour Hoffman was ready to play the Penguin. “No one has talked to me about it ever — never,” replied Hoffman. “It happened, like, five years ago, too. It was a rumor back then and it’s still a rumor.  It’s just in the press. It’s funny.”

CATWOMAN: After Michelle Pfeiffer did the honours in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, the latest rumoured shoe-in for the part goes to Angelina Jolie althought other scurrilous stories have it on anything but good authority that Rachel Weisz is destined to get the gig. However, Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer have stated they  are, for now, inclined not to bring back Batman's feline counterpart.

ROBIN: After Chris O’Connell’s risible appearance as the Boy Wonder in Schumacher’s Batman Forever and the franchise-killing Batman & Robin, the web rumour mill (and The Sun, again) has put Transformers star Shia LaBoeuf in the role. However, Both Nolan and Bale have quashed any prospect of an appearance, Bale going as far to warn that, "If Robin crops up in one of the new Batman films, I'll be chaining myself up somewhere and refusing to go to work."