Batman : The Dark Knight Blog

April 16, 2008 08:55am
HEATH Ledger was reportedly told to seek professional help for his personal problems while filming The Dark Knight.
The late Australian actor - who tragically died from an accidental prescription drugs overdose in January - was reportedly warned he had become too obsessed with his portrayal of iconic Batman villain The Joker in the upcoming blockbuster.

A source told FOX News: “Heath refused to talk to anyone out of character.

“If you tried to communicate with him normally instead of The Joker, he would just ignore you.

“He would often come to the set to hang out even on his days off, freaking everyone out. Towards the end of filming, he was warned by people that he had gone too far, but it was almost like he couldn’t connect with those who cared for him anymore.”

Ledger reportedly locked himself in an apartment for an entire month before playing The Joker, who he described as a “psychotic, mass-murdering clown”.

Ledger also admitted he had such trouble sleeping while shooting the film he resorted to taking the prescription drug Ambien.

Sources on the set of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - the movie Ledger was filming when he died - also claimed the actor could not “snap out” of character and seemed to have “lost sense” of who he was.

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LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) — This time out, there’s no vat of chemicals to explain how Batman’s greatest enemy came to be the twisted sociopath known as the Joker.

Director Christopher Nolan said there will be no changes to the film or marketing of “The Dark Knight.”

Heath Ledger’s Joker springs full-blown in this summer’s “The Dark Knight,” the sequel to 2005’s “Batman Begins” that was previewed for theater owners Thursday with a clip showing the new movie’s opening sequence.

Unlike 1989’s “Batman,” in which the deranged, disfigured clown appearance of Jack Nicholson’s Joker resulted from a dip in chemical goo, “The Dark Knight” starts right in with the bad guy in all his psychopathic glory.

“I believe whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you stranger,” Ledger’s depraved Joker cryptically tells an accomplice in the opening scenes, in which he pulls off a daring bank robbery.

In an interview at ShoWest, a theater-owners convention where distributor Warner Bros. showed off footage of “The Dark Knight” and the rest of its summer lineup, director Christopher Nolan said it was almost inevitable that the sequel would pit Christian Bale’s Batman against the Joker.

“The psychopathic clown, that’s an icon to stand with the guy with the ears and cape,” Nolan said. “It’s just a wonderful visual relationship, and it’s a terrifying image.”

Long before Ledger’s death of an accidental prescription drug overdose in January, the marketing of the movie had focused on the villain’s rise to power and his creepy appearance.

There had been speculation among critics and fans that the studio and filmmakers might take a different approach to selling the film in light of Ledger’s death, but the marketing has gone on as originally planned.

“I think he’d be very pleased to see we’re just moving ahead as is,” Nolan said. “If you try to honor somebody, you honor them by respecting their work and putting it out there for as many people to see. He was immensely proud of the work he did on the film. I feel a great burden to present that in an undistorted form.”

“The Dark Knight” is due in theaters July 18.

The last time producer Charles Roven saw Ledger was when he showed the actor the very footage that was screened at ShoWest.

Fans have been buzzing over the anarchic style Ledger brings to the role in the movie’s trailer, but the actor himself was utterly taken by what he saw of himself on screen, Roven said.

“He was just blown away by his own performance,” Roven said. “He said, `Can I see it again?’ So he was really, really thrilled.”

Bale — reprising his role as the wealthy Bruce Wayne, who moonlights as the emotionally tormented crimefighter — said he watched the footage Thursday with a heaviness of heart over Ledger. But Bale said he hopes the movie will serve as a testament.

“I hope that this can be seen as a celebration of his work,” Bale said. “He did a phenomenal job. It was a real joy working with the man. It was a joy knowing him, as well. I liked him a great deal, and I liked also how seriously he took his work.”

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‘I’m Not There’ director recalls late actor as ’so insanely gifted and so humble.’

By Shawn Adler

SANTA MONICA, California — Honored with the inaugural Robert Altman Award at the recent Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, the cast and crew of “I’m Not There” walked the blue carpet with great satisfaction and pride.

But also sadness, admitted director Todd Haynes — sadness that their friend wasn’t able to walk with them.

One of six people to portray Bob Dylan in the unusual biopic, Heath Ledger died last month from an accidental overdose at the age of 28.

“We got very close on this project. He was an extraordinary person,” Haynes told MTV News. “[He was] so insanely gifted and so humble at the same time. I just love him and I’ll miss him always.”

Nominated for an Oscar for his work in “Brokeback Mountain,” Ledger was a preternaturally talented actor. But the real tragedy of his loss is compounded by the fact that he was set to be just as talented a director, Haynes said.

“He was beginning his directorial ambitions himself. We really shared the set together, and he really dug the way we were making my film. He’d come over and whisper some suggestions and it would be brilliant, f—ing brilliant,” Haynes acknowledged. “So we lost double, we lost triple. We lost a lot.”

Although Ledger died young, he left a lifetime’s worth of quality films, Haynes said, insisting that the actor’s greatest legacy “really comes through in his work.”

“I think people were so stunned by what happened because they had already put him in a different category because of his work. That’s why the tabloid stuff and the personal stuff didn’t explain it properly and never will,” Haynes argued. “He was so much more than that, and I really think it’s in what he’s already given us that we see him best.”

The very best may be yet to come. Ledger’s performance as the Joker in the eagerly anticipated “The Dark Knight” — glimpsed briefly in a recent trailer — is already drawing raves from fans around the globe.

The trailer offers just a hint of Ledger’s work in the film, “Dark Knight” co-star Aaron Eckhart maintained, confirming reports that, as Harvey “Two-Face” Dent, he shares the screen with Gotham’s Clown Prince of Crime.

“I am glad that I was able to be in the same room and watch him work,” Eckhart contended. “I had the chance to watch him shine in this movie. He did work that just blew me away. It’s a shock.”

Haynes’ friend couldn’t share the honor with him on Saturday. But with so many roles and so much time spent together, what memory of Ledger will the director hold most dear?

“Oh God,” he said. “Every moment we spent together.”

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By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — With just a few months to market one of the biggest films of the year, Warner Bros. faces the task of selling The Dark Knight without Heath Ledger — and the appearance that it is exploiting the actor’s unexpected demise.

The movie is hardly the first to suffer a star’s death before its release. But few come freighted with the same expectations of the Batman franchise, one of the most successful in Hollywood.

MORE: A star’s death can be a boost or a hurdle for a film

Before Ledger’s death by accidental overdose, director Christopher Nolan said Knight centered largely on Ledger’s character, The Joker. An early poster of the movie features Ledger in his ghoulish makeup, scrawling in blood-red lettering: “Why so serious?”

Warner Bros. has announced no plans to change the film’s content and says the movie is still set for release July 18. On the studio’s Dark Knight website, most of the marketing materials have been removed in favor of a memorial page and a link to a single trailer.

But soon the studio will have to sell its film — and decide how much Ledger’s role will be a part of the campaign.

“Whenever the persona of a screen icon is mixed with reality in the media, it’s a tricky problem,” says Peter Guber, the former head of Columbia Pictures and producer of the first Batman film in 1989. “The media often tailgate behind the story, and it becomes bigger than the movie.”

Knight, Guber says, may benefit from the passage of time and by Ledger’s role as villain: “In today’s world, the media digestion and regurgitation of information is so rapid that even the bad news passes out of the ether quickly. The fact that it’s not being released until July is a big benefit to the studio.”

Also, Guber says, “if this had been Batman who died, you’d have a bigger problem. It can be even more depressing if your hero triumphs in the movie, but you know in real life he’s gone.”

Analysts say that the studio may be best served by focusing on other stars.

“They’ll probably step up the plan have to shift the trailers to other characters, like Harvey Dent,” the district attorney played by Aaron Eckhart, says Anne Thompson of Variety.

The studio also “will have to be very gentle in how they present the movie,” she says. “But fans will turn out not only for the movie, but to see the last performance by this great actor.”

Guber says the key is laying low. “Just let it be for a while. If you can’t make it better, don’t make it worse. This wasn’t something that happened on the set. It’s life and death. Things go on.”

Contributing: LuzElena Avitia

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How will Warner Bros. sell a summer blockbuster marked by tragedy?
By Kim Masters

Knight’s Tale: Despite persistent rumors that Heath Ledger had not finished recording all his lines for the upcoming Batman movie, Warner Bros. insists that director Christopher Nolan got what he needed while filming.

Warner has kept largely mum about how it will manage its big investment in The Dark Knight after Ledger’s sad and untimely death. The studio is still figuring out what to do not just with the film but with products like T-shirts and toys. In fact, the studio has set a big meeting for today to discuss those merchandising questions.

Warner plans to release the movie as planned in July. Usually, after filming is completed, actors do looping sessions—that is, they record and perfect their lines in a studio. It would be unusual for Nolan to have all the sound that he wants at this early stage but a producer—not associated with this project—tells us that it’s not impossible. “I can’t think of a movie where there were no looped lines whatsoever, but I can think of movies where a main character was not looped,” he says.

On a big-budget franchise picture like The Dark Knight, he adds, looping would be the norm. “When you are doing a movie like Batman, as opposed to The Savages, you loop,” he explains. “You are a perfectionist because you have the money to do it and the studio gives you whatever you want. You go through 17 takes of Heath Ledger saying, ‘I’m the Joker,’ and if it isn’t just right, you loop it.”

Warner could use a voice artist if needed—and there are rumors that the studio will do that. If so, the studio’s denials would be understandable: Warner wouldn’t want the public to be listening for variations in the voice when the movie is released. But the producer assures: “With a good voice artist, you would never know the difference.”

Indeed, when Spartacus was rereleased in 1991, the studio wanted to insert the deleted seduction “snails and oysters” scene between Tony Curtis and Laurence Olivier. The footage was there, but the sound was not. Curtis was available to redo his lines; Olivier’s part was seamlessly performed by Anthony Hopkins.

A Warner executive acknowledges that another actor may at least have to provide a Joker voice for such things as a planned theme-park attraction. Some marketing efforts—like an idea that involved calls to fans’ cell phones—may be scrapped.

Dozens of licensing agreements have been in place for months, but another studio source says that relatively few involve Ledger’s image. Many Batman-associated products are aimed at children aged 5 to 9, so, this executive says, Warner was proceeding with a degree of caution even before Ledger’s demise because of the intensity of the Joker’s character in the film. For some products, the cartoon image of the Joker was already being used. And Ledger did photo shoots so that his likeness could be used on certain products such as T-shirts.

Now Warner has to figure out what to do with products bearing that likeness. “You don’t want people to think you’re exploiting his death,” the source explains. “But his character is part of the movie, and he was on board with wanting to do this with his character.” And if Warner doesn’t release the merchandise, “The pirates would come out of the woodwork, and then it’s completely out of control.”

Meanwhile, Warner is likely to alter some of its marketing campaign, which featured Ledger’s image in the early going. A source close to the project says the plan all along was to start with the Joker and then segue to the image of Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face. In the film, Two-Face is in a love triangle with Rachel Dawes, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. It was clever to cast Gyllenhaal in the role vacated by Katie Holmes. Both have similar kewpie-doll faces, so it’s not a grating change. And Gyllenhaal brings more weight to the part. That’s one less thing to worry about in a blockbuster that’s already carrying a lot of weight.

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

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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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