Christian Bale has hinted that the next Batman movie may be his last outing as the Caped Crusader.

The actor will be reprising his role as the superhero in Christopher Nolan's third instalment of the rebooted franchise, The Dark Knight Rises, and reckons it could well be the end.

"The thing is that this will be, I believe, unless Chris says different, this will be the last time I'm playing Batman, so we want to go all out with it and try to figure a way how to up what we did before," he told E! News.

"You've always got to up it. I'm excited for it. That's the problem, it's the complacency when you start getting into franchise stories like that - you have to have the energy of making it like it's the only film," he added.

His comments confirms the filmmaker's intentions, who has said: "The key thing that makes the third film a great possibility for us is that we want to finish our story. I'm very excited about the end of the film, the conclusion, and what we've done with the characters."

Christian, who next stars with Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter, said he doesn't listen to all the rumours or speculation surrounding the forthcoming film. Instead, he waits to hear from the horse's mouth.

"I don't even know if that's the right title. Until Chris tells me, I don't believe it. It's got to be from his mouth, or else I don't really know," he added.