The rumour is all over the Interflab this morning, and I mean all over, that Christian Bale has been signed up to play in McG's Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, otherwise known as Terminator 4.

Now he's not the first character you might expect from the steely, sculptured man, apparently he's John Connor, not the new (or rather old) Terminator.

That's the first thing I find rather odd. Actually that's not true, the first thing that I find odd is that Christian Bale has signed onto an McG film and it's the fourth in the Terminator series. No matter how you spin it, this is not in the realm of Bale's other work nor in the realm of Batman.

The second thing I find strange about this rumour from AICN, who claim that this is a solid source, is that he's playing John Connor in Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins when he is clearly far more suited to play the new Terminator.

However I've always thought that since this is technically a prequel to the moment when the future John Connor sends back the Arnie Terminator then they can't have a more advanced nor Robert Patrick style Terminator before him. You'd suddenly wonder why they went from lean, average looking guy to huge body builder type and then back again in the Terminator series.

Anyway, looking at the actor I would think he would be more suited to play Terminator, even if it would mean they would look a little odd on the timeline development.

However this rumour states that he's playing John Connor, and that seems really surprising to me. Christian Bale is a top character actor who has definitely brought depth to Batman, but it would seem unlikely that he's joining an McG directed film to star in the fourth Terminator film. Has he been sold McG's role as well as he was Christopher Nolan's in the Batman franchise?

A lot of this does depend on the script, and we'd have to hope for someone as clever and as solid as Christopher Nolan behind the pen so that the franchise gets a similar restart to Batman, otherwise we're going to get an action heavy and character light script - Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines.

I can't help but think this isn't really true.