About six weeks ago, we asked the obvious question of the moment: "Where should Batman go after The Dark Knight?" Specifically, we wondered who the next villain(s) should be. I felt that Two-Face had first right of refusal, but Aaron Eckhart has said that won't be happening.

I then said that Christopher Nolan should keep it simple, with one villain, or two at the most (with the second not being a supervillain). My choices are Black Mask - kind of an anti-Bruce Wayne in a lot of ways - and Harley Quinn. The Harley angle makes sense since you want to keep the Joker involved although he clearly can't be in the next movie, and Black Mask is just a perfect fit for the types of movies Nolan is doing. He was actually an original villain in The Dark Knight, back before they decided to go with The Joker.

Anyway, those were my choices. We got literally hundreds of suggestions. Somewhere in the middle of all that, a reader suggested, amidst all the talk of Angelina as Catwoman and Johnny Depp as The Riddler, that Guy Pearce should play the next villain. And since that recommendation, I really haven't heard a better choice, not even Depp.

Johnny has become almost too mainstream, and despite how great he is, I dunno...it just feels like that pick is going overboard at this point. The same goes for Angelina as Catwoman. Of course, I'm far from convinced that those characters will be in the third movie.

But MTV, perhaps realizing that Guy Pearce and Christopher Nolan share some history (a little movie called Memento), asked the actor about playing The Riddler.

"I'd love to work with Chris again," he said. "There hasn't been any discussion, we'll have to wait and see. I have a lot of reluctance [to playing a superhero or villain], but doing it with someone like Chris Nolan would certainly make it appealing."