
As Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine all sign on to a Batman Begins sequel, Katie Holmes’s name is noticeably missing.
Bale as Batman was the first to sign on, followed by Caine and Freeman. However, Holmes won’t reprise her role as district attorney Rachel Dawes – reportedly because Warner Bros. is angry that her engagement to Tom Cruise is getting more media attention than their summer blockbuster is.
A source told pagesix.com that “she won’t be in the sequel … the next romantic interest will be a much stronger actress. Warner is happy that people are now focusing on who’ll be playing the Joker rather than Katie and Tom.”
Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg, director of War of the Worlds, told Newsweek he thinks the media has blown the relationship out of proportion.
“Tom lost his cool because he was deliriously happy, and now he was being punished for his public display of happiness. What Tom did on Oprah was exactly what Tom did with me when he first told me about Katie Holmes. But the press didn’t like the way Tom bared his soul,” he says.
But now Spielberg seems to have changed his tune. The latest reports say he dropped out of today’s “War of the Worlds” junket at the Essex House.
Some reporters speculate Spielberg is tired of the ever looming shadow of TomKat over each War of the Worlds promotional event.
A representative for DreamWorks responded by saying, “he was never absolutely fixed to do the press conference. It still could happen.”