What it is to be wanted… Though he’s busy being Batman for what will likely be the last time in The Dark Knight Rises, Christian Bale has a raft of possible future options stretched out in front of him, according to Variety. Yes, he’s being courted by various studios for all sorts of movies, including the remake of Oldboy and Clint Eastwood’s take on A Star is Born.

At this time, Bale hasn’t made any decisions, but it must be nice to have his pick of high-profile jobs. Let’s run down the possibilities, shall we?

Spike Lee is on board to direct the Oldboy reboot for Mandate, and Bale is being offered the role of the villain who incarcerates the hero in a nondescript room for 15 years, as part of a masterplan that seemingly continues even when he's released and sets about tracking down his captors.

Meanwhile, Eastwood is considering him as a solid male lead for A Star is Born, which would find him mentoring Beyonce and falling for the rising starlet even as his own career fades.

Then there’s Michael Mann’s Gold, about which little is known, but which apparently takes the form of a modern-day Treasure of the Sierra Madre-style adventure with prospectors searching for the shiny stuff.

In the lesser-known file, we have Out of the Furnace, the film formerly known as The Low Dweller, a tale of a criminal name Slim avenging the murder of his brother. That has Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper in charge.

And finally, in the epic corner, Darren Aronofsky has Noah, which would follow the building of the Biblical Ark and which would no doubt demand that Bale go method on a Biblical diet of desert-food and grow a full beard.

As mentioned, he wants to wait and see, and more importantly get finished with Caped Crusading before he fills the ol’ work diary back up, and that means he won’t be available until the end of the year at the earliest. Plus, he could turn around and reject all of these options, though we must say it’s a tempting bunch for any actor…