This is a very sad day for the fans of Nolan’s Batman franchise. As you may have heard, Christopher Nolan’s first cut ofThe Dark Knight Riseswas presented to Warner Bros. studio executives (Seehere) so that Nolan may fine-tune the film. What has recently come to the public’s attention is the criticism of these executives and how it has affected the film’s release.

It turns out that Warner Bros. execs had a few ridiculous requests. Taking a public poll they found that a certain demographic was interested in seeing The Riddler in the film. Based on that poll, they wanted Nolan to use footage from Joel Schumacher’sBatman Foreverto include Jim Carrey’s version of The Riddler. Nolan was outraged and went to his legal team to file an injunction that prevents the release of the film until Warner Bros. agrees to keeping Jim Carrey out of the film. Below is a statement released from Christopher Nolan’s legal team.

Our client was given creative control over the making of this film in return for his agreement to work on it. Although Warner Bros. has funded the project, we are at a legal stalemate due to the details of Christopher Nolan’s contract stipulations. We are working diligently to ensure that the public gets to see this masterpiece of a film but Mr. Nolan wants the public to see it as he intended. Warner Bros. has chosen to ignore any type of settlement so it is unlikely that the public will see the film this year.

This is very sad news. As a fan myself I was looking forward to this film for a long time and it looks like there’s a chance that it may never see the light of day.