I'm expecting Warner Bros to issue a statement any moment now clarifying what Michael Caine had to say about who'll be playing the villains in the next "Batman" movie. If you missed it, "Dark Knight" star Caine told MTV that Johnny Depp will be The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman will be The Penguin.

As I said earlier, I believe what's happened here is a WB exec told Caine who the studio would like to get for the next film - which, by the way, Christopher Nolan hasn't even decided he wants to do yet; oh, and there's no script! - and Caine mistook this person's 'wishes' for, well, word on who they've already got . (He is getting on ol Michael, so don't tear him down in the IMDB forums if this is the case).

Philip Seymour Hoffman, who Caine says will be donning the beak of the wicked 'Penguin' in the inevitable-but-far-from-official "Batman 3", has heard the rumours too. He tells The Stone Report that he'd love to be considered for such a project but as of today, he's not the next Bat-villain.

''Some friend of mine told me he read that [rumour]", Hoffman says from the Toronto Film Festival. "First I heard of it. I don't think so."

"I grew up a comic book fan, so I love that stuff. I love going to that stuff. I think what they're doing with that whole Batman story is really true to what that whole Batman thing has always been. It's one of the darkest origins of a superhero, to get all nerdy and geeky on you. That character sees his parents gunned down as a young child. I remember when I was a kid reading that story, so seeing it now come to life as the dark tale that it really is as an intense, really dark, very visceral, adult tale that they're doing now, all the great work people are doing on it, of course I wouldn't say, ‘Well, no, no no.' But I don't know the reality of it, so I wouldn't say ‘yes' to you."

And what say you Mr. Depp?