A view tidbits on upcoming movie sequels

• The next Batman movie will be called The Dark Knight Rises and will begin shooting next year with a release scheduled for July 20, 2012. And contrary to previous reports, the main villain will not be the Riddler. Director Christopher Nolan has confirmed this, but little else about the film, except that it will not be shot in 3-D. Nolan told the Los Angeles Times “We’ll use many of the same characters as we have all along, and we’ll be introducing some new ones.” I assume that means Christian Bale as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. Tom Hardy has also been cast and one must assume he will play the lead villain, whoever that may be.
• In what I think is a terrible decision, James Cameron has announced his next two film projects will be Avatar 2 and Avatar 3. This, to me, reduces Cameron to a George Lucas wannabe. The first sequel is scheduled to hit theaters in December 2014 with the Numero Tres coming one year later. Most of the action in  Avatar 2 is supposedly going to take place in Pandora's oceans (Who knew?) and there is no word about what the third edition in the set is supposed to be about. One source has told me that one of the films will be a sequel to the original and the other a prequel. Sure. Fine. Whatever.
• Speaking of prequels, writer Nicholas Pileggi has confirmed he is writing one for Goodfellas as a pilot for a possible HBO series. He also said the film's director Martin Scorsese will be involved but he didn't say in what capacity.