Rumors: Joseph Gordon-Levitt For Batman 3; The Lizard As Villain In Spider-Man

It's a slow news week, and when legit news isn't filling the frame there is room for rumor to grow. There are two big ones today: that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is being primed to appear in Batman 3, perhaps as the Riddler, and that the big villain of Spider-Man will be the Lizard.

First up, Mr. Gordon-Levitt. This comes from Deadline and Movieline sister gossip site Hollywood Life, which claims that JGL has been tapped to play the Riddler in Batman 3. There's no substantiation to this, and since we don't even know if the script is finished (fairly certain it is not) it seems too early to call. But JGL is in Christopher Nolan's Inception, which makes it a lot easier to believe than almost every other Batman 3 rumor we've heard;  supposedly the rumor originated in a joke or comment made on the Inception set. And it certainly seems like a good idea.

For what it's worth, however, JGL's reps have already denied this, according to The Wrap. So leave it alone for now and wait for the script to be delivered.

And now Spider-Man. Earlier this week we heard that Michael Fassbender is up for two roles in Marvel-derived movies: Magneto in X-Men: First Class and the unnamed villain in Sony's Spider-Man reboot. The impressive thing, given that there are a couple drafts of the Spider-Man script at this point, is that no one seems to know who the villain is. Who'd be right for Fassbender?

Bleeding Cool says that it is the Lizard. The character was being primed to eventually appear in the series directed by Sam Raimi, as Dylan Baker played Peter Parker's teacher Dr. Curt Connors. That's the alter-ego of the Lizard, who transforms into a sort of mean man-reptile after a genetic experiment to use lizard DNA to regrow his own human arm goes awry. Baker is out, given that the entire series cast is being replaced, so there's certainly room for a new Connors and Lizard. And it's a character that could be threatening but not terribly expensive, and we haven't seen him on screen yet. So perhaps...