The Dark Knight Rises to be Christian Bale's last Batman film?

I think if anybody's ever going to get any definitive answers to anything regarding The Dark Knight Rises the best thing to do might be to hang around whatever local pub Michael Caine is enjoying himself at. We sure as heck can't get anything good out of Christian Bale, who can't even make a statement like "this is the last time I'm playing Batman" sound concrete.  In an interview with E! News to promote his upcoming film, The Fighter, the discussion was largely dominated by talk of the next Batman flick, and that's where Bale made this statement....

Bale: "The thing is that this will be, I believe, unless Chris says different, this will be the last time I'm playing Batman."

Whether or not Christopher Nolan says different remains to be seen of course. There's precious little information on the film, which is keeping with the secretive nature of the entire franchise up to this point, but speculation has been around for awhile that this would be Nolan's last Batman flick as director. Bale seems to think so too.

Personally I kinda hope it is. Part of me really wants to see a film titled The Dark Knight Returns, but that's probably never going to happen, and I don't want to see this franchise collapse in on itself. Nobody wants that one really awful flick that makes us say "Ooooh, they hung around for one flick too many".

TotalFilm has even more from the actor, who doesn't seem to know much of anything about anything. Paraphrasing Robert De Niro in A Boy's Life, "He doesn't know a thing or two about a thing or two". He doesn't know the plot, anything about script, when it starts....nada. He just has faith that he'll know whatever he needs to whenever the time is right. Ooookay.I found that interview to be rather annoying, to be honest. You can read it here.