'Dark Knight,' 'Pirates' Sequels Eying 2010 Production Dates, 2011 Releases

Updated 10:46 PM EDT, Fri, Jul 24, 2009

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Big news from Comic-Con – two of the highest-grossing franchises in movie history on their way back to the big screen.

The sequel to 2008's blockbuster "The Dark Night" will begin production in 2010, Gary Oldman, who plays Commissioner Gordon, said at a panel for his latest film, "The Book Of Eli" – the first news of the superhero sequel.

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"The next 'Batman' is next year," he said, according to /Film. "So I think it is two years away. But you didn't hear it from me."

There's still been no word on director Christopher Nolan's attachment to the project – up next, he's filming sci-fi drama "Inception" with Leonardo DiCaprio.

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But another franchise will reportedly set sail again next year as well.

"We're going to shoot 'Pirates 4' in April or May of next year," Oren Aviv, Disney's head of production, told Comingsoon.net. "We are going to release it hopefully in 2011, is the plan."

He added that the film, the follow-up to 2007's "Pirates Of the Caribbean: At World's End," could be the launching point for "another trilogy."

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"It's important to get the story right and it's important to me to scale it down, because we can't get bigger," Aviv said. "The movies have subsequently gotten bigger and bigger and very complicated and they were satisfying on so many levels obviously, but I want to kind of reboot the whole thing and bring it down to its core, its essence, just characters."

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