Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are soon to show up in theaters together in 3:10 to Yuma. Apparently they liked working together, because it looks like Crowe may show up in Bale’s Batman movie The Dark Knight.

Christian spilled the beans to If Magazine where he says, “Russell’s going to actually be in the new BATMAN movie.” Well it doesn’t get much clearer than that. So Russell’s in it. Now what? Bale doesn’t drop any bombs about what part he’ll be playing or even how much he’ll be in it, so we have no idea.

Odds are that it’s a cameo, if it was anything more substantial you have to think we’d have heard something about it before now. Besides, the movie is already packed with so many major characters there’s really not room for another. That doesn’t mean his part might not be significant though. Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan could be setting him up to play a major role in the next movie.

Of course a few weeks ago I’d have said there’s no way in hell that Russell Crowe would do a Dark Knight movie, let alone a Dark Knight sequel, but lately Crowe’s name has been popping up all over the place in relation to geek-friendly properties. It was just a few days back that Crowe’s name popped up in conjunction with Star Trek for instance. If Crowe can be the new Khan, then why not be the next bad guy to fight Batman?