I put “Director’s Cut” in quotes for two reasons:
1) Nolan doesn’t put together director’s cuts. He’s rarely in a situation where he doesn’t have final cut in the first place, and when he doesn’t, he’s good about working with studios to come up with a cut he’s satisfied with. He rarely even has deleted scenes to put on the disc.
2) I seriously doubt Nolan has anything whatsoever to do with this.
“Director’s Cut” used to mean that the director was brought back for the DVD to put together his version of the movie. This could be a good thing, like when Robert Wise was finally allowed to put together his version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, turning it from a total stinkburger to just an overly long and overwrought episode of the original series. It could be a bad thing, like Ridley Scott’s not-terrible but weird cut of Alien.
No, this smells of “cash-in”. Worse, it’s a bad idea.
By all accounts, what’s missing out of the movie is thirty minutes or so detailing Bane’s origin that we already told you about.
So, yeah, the studio wants to cut that back in on the DVD. Into a movie that was nearly three hours long already.
Personally? I think cut footage was generally cut for a reason, and I doubt this is any exception. By all means, put the footage on the disc, I want to see it. Just don’t cut it into the movie.