'Dark Knight Rises' Updates: Leaked Photos, Returning Villains

It wouldn't be Friday without another update on "The Dark Knight Rises." Today, we've rounded up some comments from screenwriter Jonathan Nolan about those leaked "Dark Knight" set photos you may or may not have seen (smart money says you have), plus a juicy new rumor about a returning Batman bad guy.

First up is Nolan, who spoke with IGN about his new CBS thriller "Person of Interest" and his work on "The Dark Knight Rises." When the conversation turned to the vast amount of spoilers and unofficial photos coming from the Christopher Nolan set, Jonathan teased that these leaks barely scratch the surface of what fans will get to see in theaters.

"You know, Chris loves to shoot on these IMAX cameras, these massive cameras," he explained. "As soon as you release something in the theaters, like a trailer, people go in and they record it with their iPhone or a camera, and they put it online. But when we first released that IMAX prologue for 'The Dark Knight,' the image was so big that no one could record the whole thing with their camera. So you have one YouTube video of the top half of it and another YouTube video of the bottom half. I think the goal with those movies and the thing that Chris is doing and just kicking ass with is making a movie so big that you couldn't possibly fit all of it. Even in tiny little pieces, you still wouldn't get a sense of the scale of it. I saw a little bit the other day, and the scale is just vast."

Now to the rumor mill, but first a warning: if true, the following is a fairly major spoiler, so last chance to turn away.

Much of the bad guy discussion on "The Dark Knight Rises" has centered on Bane, Ra's al Ghul and his daughter Talia, and the returning League of Shadows. But perhaps there's another returning Batman villain in the mix: none other than Jonathan Crane, the fear-inducing Scarecrow played by Cillian Murphy in "Batman Begins" and again, albeit briefly, in "The Dark Knight."

According to several fan reports (via Worst Previews), Murphy reprises his role in a scene where the Scarecrow, serving as a judge of sorts in the besieged-by-Bane Gotham City, puts Jim Gordon in the hot seat and tasks him with choosing his own fate: death or exile.

Check out the full report for more on the Scarecrow rumor.

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