Christian Bale's imdb page is a clean sheet after "The Dark Knight Rises," and that's for a reason: The Oscar winner has made clear that he wants to focus on his last Batman hurrah before deciding what to do next. When that production wraps in November, he'll have some meaty options, as Variety's Justin Kroll exlcusively reports. They include a third remake of “A Star is Born” starring Beyonce Knowles and directed by Clint Eastwood; Fox’s “Gold,” directed by Michael Mann; a remake of Korean thriller “Old Boy” that Spike Lee will direct; Relativity’s “Out of the Furnace” directed by Scott Cooper; and “Noah,” Darren Aronofsky’s biblical epic at Paramount. (There’d also been talk of Bale joining “Last Photograph” at Warner Bros. but he’s no longer in the mix.) At this time, Bale has not attached himself to any of these projects, nor has he identified any as a front-runner. With the Batman trilogy wrapping in November, Bale wouldn’t be free until the beginning of the new year. Since most of the aforementioned films are scheduled to start lensing then, it wouldn’t be out of the question for Bale to tackle more than one — but it would be mighty difficult. Interesting side note: None of the projects is a franchise title — nor do there appear to be any openings for tentpole roles that shoot during that time. But Bale, who also toplined “Terminator: Salvation,” has always deftly balanced big-budget genre pics with smaller award friendly pictures like “I’m Not There” and “The Fighter,” which earned Bale his an Academy Award for best supporting actor. Either way, Bale finds himself in a very unique and favorable position — especially coming off his first year since 2003 without a film in theaters (since 2002 there have only been two years — ‘03 and ‘04 — in which Bale has not had multiple releases).He’ll get back on track in 2012 with “The Dark Knight Rises” and the period pic “The 13 Women of Nanjing,” which he shot before donning the cape and mask for the last time.
