Batman : The Dark Knight Blog

And so the Dark Knight news continues in absence of Heath Ledger, that melancholy feeling continues to linger. It is going to be a little weird in these next few months, as promotion gears up again and we get more viral marketing campaigns - probably with the same Joker stance.

Coming Soon have posted three new shots of Batman in an assortment of poses:

A possible new poster here, looks a little green and fake but that may just be the quality of the image itself. I prefer the other posters that we have seen.

Bruce Wayne aside the new Bat-suit (everything always has to be new and improved!)

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The official Warner Bros. Dark Knight website has paid tribute to the late Heath Ledger,

The Why So Serious page has also added their mark of respect with a black ribbon:

(Thanks Adam)

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Ledger had charisma as natural as gravity

Christopher Nolan, director of Batman sequel The Dark Knight, has told of working with Heath Ledger, remembering him as a creative actor that had a memorable presence on set.

Ledger plays the psychotic, mass-murdering, skateboarding Joker in Nolan’s film, set to be released in July.

“Silently, I curse the moment that Heath first skated onto our set in full character make-up,” Nolan wrote in US magazine Newsweek.

“I’d fretted about the reaction of Batman fans to a skateboarding Joker, but the actual result was a proliferation of skateboards among the younger crew members.

“If you’d asked those kids why they had chosen to bring their boards to work, they would have answered honestly that they didn’t know.

“That’s real charisma - as invisible and natural as gravity. That’s what Heath had.”

Nolan also told of Ledger’s thoughtfulness, saying he thanked each crew member after asking them to work late one night.

“Everyone seemed to understand that Heath had something special and that we had to capture it before it disappeared,” Nolan said.

“Months later, I learned that as Heath left the set that night, he quietly thanked each crew member for working late. Quietly. Not trying to make a point, just grateful for the chance … they’d given him.”

Nolan said he had been looking forward to showing Ledger the finished film.

“Now that screening will never be real,” he said. “I see him every day in my edit suite. I study his face, his voice.

“And I miss him terribly.”

Perth-born Ledger, 28, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment last week.

The cause of his death will not be known until toxicology tests are completed.

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Jan 26, 2008, 10:01 PM | by Kristen Baldwin
While the late Heath Ledger’s family and friends tend to the sad details of his burial this weekend, a debate is ripping through Internet fan sites about what will stand as Ledger’s last completed film, the Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight (due to open on July 17th). The burning question is, how complete was Ledger’s post-production work on the maniacal character of the Joker?

On Jan. 25th, E! Online gossip columnist Ted Casablanca posted an item quoting a “studio insider” saying that Ledger had done “zero” post-production looping on the movie. (Typically, an actor re-records many lines for a film long after principal photography wraps, in a process called “automated dialogue replacement,” or ADR. It’s an especially extensive process when many shots have been filmed on location, since all kinds of incidental noise can interfere with the dialogue’s clarity and can require up to three-quarters of the lines to be re-performed on a dubbing stage, with the actor looking up at the film images and matching his or her own mouth movements.) But Ledger’s vocals are perfectly clear in the bits of footage so far released—trailers and a prologue bank-robbery sequence shown with IMAX prints of I Am Legend. Fan websites like Ain’t-It-Cool-News, Superherohype.com and Batman-on-Film.com are full of assertions contrary to the Casablanca report, saying that in fact Ledger was done with all significant looping. Ledger himself, while promoting the Todd Haynes film I’m Not There last fall, had said he was finished with his work on Dark Knight.

Still, given the way post-production schedules usually run on mega-budget superhero films, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that director Chris Nolan might have wanted to call on Ledger for limited additional sessions with more than six months to go before opening weekend. Directors often decide to insert new bits of dialogue in post-production for the sake of clarity and economy. Doing anything like that now with Ledger’s Dark Knight role would require hiring another voice actor to emulate his speaking voice, or creating a complicated mash-up from Ledger’s existing dialogue tracks. (Both of these alternate approaches have been taken in similar past situations, as when Oliver Reed passed away before the completion of Gladiator and James Dean died before the release of Giant.)

Dark Knight director Chris Nolan and execs at Warner Bros., the studio releasing the film, were not available for comment, and have not issued any public statements about the status of the movie. EW placed a call to Oscar-winning sound designer and sound editor Richard King, who’s handling the Dark Knight audio work, but he declined to comment. According to several other sound-mixing experts who also declined to speak on the record, there’s no way to tell what the situation is with Dark Knight from the outside, since the amount of ADR required, and the timetable for doing it, varies wildly between films. (In plenty of instances, looping is not completed until very close to the final release date, perhaps as little as a month or two out.) Ledger had been working in London on Terry Gilliam’s film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which meant he was close to Dark Knight director Chris Nolan’s home turf and might well have been available if needed.

Warner Bros. has temporarily pulled back on some of the promotional material centered on Ledger’s creepy whiteface makup as the Joker, keyed to the tagline “Why So Serious”? It remains to be confirmed whether the film’s technical wrapup will require a new game plan as well. —Steve Daly

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These are some very kind and interesting words recanting Heath Ledger’s on set aura, as told by Chris Nolan (via Newsweek)

One night, as I’m standing on LaSalle Street in Chicago, trying to line up a shot for “The Dark Knight,” a production assistant skateboards into my line of sight. Silently, I curse the moment that Heath first skated onto our set in full character makeup. I’d fretted about the reaction of Batman fans to a skateboarding Joker, but the actual result was a proliferation of skateboards among the younger crew members. If you’d asked those kids why they had chosen to bring their boards to work, they would have answered honestly that they didn’t know. That’s real charisma—as invisible and natural as gravity. That’s what Heath had.

Heath was bursting with creativity. It was in his every gesture. He once told me that he liked to wait between jobs until he was creatively hungry. Until he needed it again. He brought that attitude to our set every day. There aren’t many actors who can make you feel ashamed of how often you complain about doing the best job in the world. Heath was one of them.

One time he and another actor were shooting a complex scene. We had two days to shoot it, and at the end of the first day, they’d really found something and Heath was worried that he might not have it if we stopped. He wanted to carry on and finish. It’s tough to ask the crew to work late when we all know there’s plenty of time to finish the next day. But everyone seemed to understand that Heath had something special and that we had to capture it before it disappeared. Months later, I learned that as Heath left the set that night, he quietly thanked each crew member for working late. Quietly. Not trying to make a point, just grateful for the chance to create that they’d given him.

Those nights on the streets of Chicago were filled with stunts. These can be boring times for an actor, but Heath was fascinated, eagerly accepting our invitation to ride in the camera car as we chased vehicles through movie traffic—not just for the thrill ride, but to be a part of it. Of everything. He’d brought his laptop along in the car, and we had a high-speed screening of two of his works-in-progress: short films he’d made that were exciting and haunting. Their exuberance made me feel jaded and leaden. I’ve never felt as old as I did watching Heath explore his talents. That night I made him an offer—knowing he wouldn’t take me up on it—that he should feel free to come by the set when he had a night off so he could see what we were up to.

When you get into the edit suite after shooting a movie, you feel a responsibility to an actor who has trusted you, and Heath gave us everything. As we started my cut, I would wonder about each take we chose, each trim we made. I would visualize the screening where we’d have to show him the finished film—sitting three or four rows behind him, watching the movements of his head for clues to what he was thinking about what we’d done with all that he’d given us. Now that screening will never be real. I see him every day in my edit suite. I study his face, his voice. And I miss him terribly.

Back on LaSalle Street, I turn to my assistant director and I tell him to clear the skateboarding kid out of my line of sight when I realize—it’s Heath, woolly hat pulled low over his eyes, here on his night off to take me up on my offer. I can’t help but smile.

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Heath Ledger FanVid, Photomontage to the song “last goodbye” by Alex Band (of The Calling)

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This is shocking and terrible news, who knows what shall happen to The Dark Knight now that he has died. All principal photography has been completed but this is a heart wrenching blow to all of us that had fallen in love with his portrayal as The Joker. I personally can’t find the words to explain my feelings at this point, what a horrible loss - an actor that seemed to be reaching his peak and had such great things ahead of him.

From the BBC,

Hollywood actor Heath Ledger has been found dead at a downtown Manhattan residence, a New York Police Department spokesman has said.

“He was found unconscious at the apartment and pronounced dead,” a police spokeswoman said.

Police are investigating whether the Australian actor, who earned an Oscar nomination for 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, died of a drug overdose.

The 28-year-old was found dead in the SoHo flat at around 1530 (2030 GMT).

Police said they did not suspect foul play and that his body had been discovered surrounded by pills.

From the Associated Press:

Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday at a downtown Manhattan residence, and police said drugs may have been a factor. He was 28. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Ledger had an appointment for a massage at the Manhattan apartment believed to be his home. The housekeeper who went to let him know the masseuse had arrived found him dead at 3:26 p.m.

A large crowd of paparazzi and gawkers began gathering Tuesday evening outside the building on an upscale block in SoHo, where several police officers guarded the door.

Our thoughts go out to his friends and family.

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January 22, 2008, 4:42 pm
Actor Heath Ledger Is Found Dead

By Sewell Chan

The actor Heath Ledger was found dead this afternoon in an apartment building at 421 Broome Street in SoHo, according to the New York City police. Mr. Ledger was 28.

At 3:31 p.m., a masseuse arrived at Apartment 5A in the building for an appointment with Mr. Ledger, the police said. The masseuse was let in to the home by a housekeeper, who then knocked on the door of Mr. Ledger’s bedroom. When no one answered, the housekeeper and the masseuse opened the bedroom and found Mr. Ledger unconscious. They shook him, but he did not respond. They immediately called the authorities.

The police said they did not suspect foul play. Officials said pills were found near the body.

Mr. Ledger, a native of Perth, Australia, won acclaim for his role as a co-star in “Brokeback Mountain”, a 2005 film. The film, based on a short story by Annie Proulx about two cowboys who fall in love, won critical acclaim. Reviewing the film in The New York Times, the critic Stephen Holden wrote, “Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn.”

Mr. Ledger met the actress Michelle Williams while filming ‘’Brokeback Mountain.” The two actors fell into a very public romance. They had a daughter, Matilda Rose, who was born on Oct. 28, 2005. They moved to Brooklyn, but then separated last year.

In an interview in London for an article published in November, Mr. Ledger said told The New York Times, ‘’I feel like I’m wasting time if I repeat myself.” He said in the interview that he was not proud of his latest role, in Todd Haynes’s “I’m Not There,” in which Mr. Ledger was one of a half-dozen actors depicting the musician Bob Dylan. ‘’I feel the same way about everything I do. The day I say, ‘It’s good’ is the day I should start doing something else,” said in the interview.

Calls by The Times to Mara Buxbaum, a publicist for Mr. Ledger, and Steve Alexander, the actor’s agent, were not immediately returned this afternoon.

Thomas J. Lueck contributed reporting.

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The readers over at /film have sent in some very cool Dark Knight promotional items - a beautiful Joker card set donned with the phrase “Why So Serious”, the Batman logo and the film’s release date and a white t-shirt with a hideous Joker grin sprawled across it.

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There has been a rather interesting development in terms of my most anticipated movie of 2008, The Dark Knight.

Speaking to The Los Angeles Times, director Christopher Nolan has revealed that The Joker won’t in fact be the key element of the story.

“The Joker, he sort of cuts through the film - he’s got no story arc, he’s just a force of nature tearing through. Heath has given an amazing performance in the role, it’s really extraordinary”, said Nolan.

Revealing the true villain, Nolan adds “Harvey Dent is a tragic figure, and his story is the backbone of this film”.

Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, is Gotham’s District Attorney who is said to start the movie as himself, and end the movie as Two-Face.

The Joker and Two-Face however aren’t the only two villains who’ll be terrorising Gotham in The Dark Knight as Cillian Murphy will also return to continue his role as Scarecrow. “It’s a dark and complex story,” said Nolan, “and the villains are dark and complex as well.”
I’m already a tiny bit too excited about The Dark Knight and this news certainly isn’t helping my case. Will The Joker be the cause of Harvey Dent’s transformation into Two-Face? Possibly.

Either way, our favourite Dark Knight will have no shortage of villains to go up against. I can only hope the movie doesn’t suffer the same fate as Spiderman 3, where too many villains proved to be a very bad idea.

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