Christopher Nolan may well be tight lipped about next year’s highly anticipated Dark Knight, but that didn’t stop our intrepid LA reporter Paul Fischer from trying to get the lowdown whilst the director was in town promoting "The Prestige".

Q: You said you don't think about casting until you've finished a script, but you cast Heath Ledger [as Joker], so does that mean that The Dark Knight script is actually finished?

CN: Umm, no it doesn't, what it means is that we finished constructing that character and so we were able to sorta think about that. You know, his cast was a series of fortunate events, he expressed an interest. I hadn't really thought that he would be interested in doing it but it was worth a try so it was actually a very early conversation. Then, you know, we realized we were seeing the same character.

Q: You also said that Harvey Dent will be in the new film, but does that mean that Two Face will be in the film?

CN: I couldn't say, you'll find out.

Q: How much have you written?

CN: You want to know what page I'm on? I wouldn't tell the studio that, I'm not going to tell you that (laughter). What I will say is it's coming along.

Q: Even Chris [Bale] has said that even he hasn't had a conversation about what the next [Batman] movie is going to be about. How important is it to keep it with [David] Goyer, your brother [Jonathan Nolan] and yourself before releasing it to executives...

CN: We keep it very close to the chest. I mean, we, it's part of the process. We've been working on the script for a long time, over a year now one way or another with David Goyer and my brother, but it has to be right. We are almost finished.

Q: Are we going to see the detective side of Batman in this one?

CN: I can't really say any more about it (laughter).

Q: It will be darker than the first one?

CN: To be honest, I really don't think in those terms, the story will be what the story is and it will be for you guys to say whether it is or not. I honestly don't think of it like that.

Q: How close are we to hearing who Harvey Dent is going to be?

CN: I don't know who is going to him and I am the only person who would know so...I don't know

Q: Are we a couple months away?

CN: I don't know, we'll have to know fairly soon I suppose is what you are asking. We're shooting in February so...

During this weekend’s "Prestige" junket, there were at least 4 participants involved in next year’s Batman sequel, "The Dark Knight", but getting that much out of messrs Nolan, Bale and Caine was daunting to say the least. Only younger brother Jonathan Nolan, co-writer, said something of value, it seemed, to a point, as our PAUL FISCHER discovered.

How much of the Dark Knight are you involved in?

NOLAN: Well I wrote my draft; now Chris is…

What can you tell us about your draft?

NOLAN: Warner Brothers has a team of ninjas that will execute me if I say anything about the script.

Is it darker than the first one?

NOLAN: The name says it all.

So it’s definitely darker.

NOLAN: The name says it all. Absolutely right.

Will we see more of Batman’s detective side? Are you open to it?

NOLAN: Wouldn’t that be great? Yeah, that would be fantastic. I would love that. That would be wonderful.

You turned in your Dark Knight draft. How do you work together?

NOLAN: Both Chris and I think of writing as sort of a tortured, solitary existence. I think that’s probably how you arrive at the best material. The process we found that works really well is you go off and lose your mind and you write your draft and you come back in and then the other guy says, “This sucks.” And you sort of have to fight for the ideas that are good and it seems to be the case that the best stuff in each of the films are the ones we argued about, that went back and forth.

What about David Goyer’s role in all this

NOLAN: At this point it’s…Dave’s a really busy guy. We’re lucky to collaborate with Chris on the story. So those guys gave me the…I wish I could tell you all about it, cause it’s awesome. They gave me this awesome story, so my job was really easy. They gave me this fantastic story and I sort of put it together.

Michael Caine knows how to woo the press with his charm and stories in abundance. Promoting his supporting role as a magician’s helper in "The Prestige", Caine talked to PAUL FISCHER about his work on "The Dark Knight" Batman sequel, not to mention the long-gestating remake of his own classic, Sleuth. More of the interview in its entirety to follow.

Q: Why did you love the original Batman Begins so much, because you can pick and choose what you want to do?

CAINE: I loved Batman; I thought it was great, because to me, the butler is the human representative of all of US in the middle of the movie, with all these extraordinary characters. That’s a specialty of mine, in that I’ve played very human sort of characters so for me that was great. And I’d never been in one of those great big blockbusters. Also it’s an old age pension thing. The last time Michael Gough played it he was 83 so I’ve got 10 years to wait. The way they make ‘em I’ll make about 3.

Have you seen anything on Dark Knight yet?

CAINE:No. I know it’s called Dark Knight, it’s about The Joker, I know the joker’s Heath Ledger, but Chris won’t tell you anything.

But you are doing the Sleuth remake.

CAINE: Yes I am doing that. That’s with Jude Law and is being directed by Kenneth Branagh with a script by Harold Pinter.

How different is it from your original?

CAINE: It’s very different indeed. Kenneth Branagh and I were having lunch the other day and some woman came up to us and said aren’t we doing the remake of Sleuth? He said no, we’re doing a movie based on the plotline of Sleuth and we’ve stolen the title. That’s it, it’s very different. I’m playing the role that Larry Olivier played in the original much less flamboyantly, and you’ll see the interior of the house in this new version is very different as well. We’re shooting a Harold Pinter script while the original was very much the play.

In Batman Begins, you put in a lot of background story on Alfred. Can we expect more of that in Dark Knight?

CAINE: No that was just for me. What I wanted to be was a sharp, staccato, military delivery. I wanted to be a servant but tough. If he’d been injured in the SAS, he stayed on and got a job in the sergeant’s mess, so he knew how to do drinks and serve. But you’ve still got this guy who is inherently a trained killer. That’s what I wanted and that’s how I played him. I don’t know if anyone else noticed.