And its a doozy.

From the SuperheroHype! forums we’ve got some spy photography from the set of The Dark Knight, the next Batman film.
The first image is someone who MIGHT be Heath Ledger. He’s definitely got a white face and green hair, but from this distance it could be a stand in. The second image is more clear, showing masks that the Joker’s crew will wear during the scene they were filming. I mentioned a scene was being filmed the other day at the old Chicago post office, and this appears to be from that same area.

Superhero Hype also has an extensive gallery of the sets themselves here.

Thanks to MaxCon for the link. So based on seeing virtually nothing, whats your knee jerk reaction? Leave a comment.

Batman-On-Film’s Bill Ramey reports on that the Joker we know now from the comics and as played in films past is not the Joker we should expect in the highly anticipated sequel to Batman Begins.

Sticking to the more realistic take of the first movie, you can expect the purple suit to be gone, the over the top gags might be fewer, and his skin might be a more grey tone than white. Should we be scared of these changes? Maybe. They took a big risk on fans hiring Heath Ledger in the first place, and changing up the Joker’s tone and appearance sounds like like a recipe for disaster. Or at least it might be in anyone else’s hands. Remember, this is the same crew and cast from Begins, which is easily my favorite comic movie ever now. Director Christopher Nolan and Writer David Goyer have earned my complete trust with this franchise and if they can find a way to make the Joker scary and unsettling on film without giving up too much of the goofy elements of the character, we’ll have a real great villain and one that won’t be compared with Jack Nicholson.

We may know soon enough. Superhero Hype reports that a daring bank robbery scene with the Joker is being filmed in Chicago as I type this post. I’m tempted to get in the car right now.

Back in September I said the next LEGO game and the next Batman game were going to be one and the same.

Today the news is official. Warner Bros Interactive will publish and Traveller’s Tales will develop LEGO Batman for all consoles and PC.

Thankfully, they promise to maintain some of the elements that made LEGO Star Wars great, namely the co-op multiplayer as Batman and Robin, along with Free Play using unlocked secret characters. At last, The Joker will be playable in a video game!

Full Press Release follows. [Read the rest of this entry…]

Everyone should know by now (because we already told you) that Katie Holmes is too busy making babies and bad career moves to reprise her role from Batman Begins in the upcoming sequel, The Dark Knight. Taking up the mantle of Rachel Dawes will be the excellent Maggie Gyllenhaal who, having recently seen her in the glorious Stranger Than Fiction, should do an excellent job in the role.

I went by my local comic shop on Wednesday to pick up the final issue of Civil War and the new Immortal Iron Fist and to my surprise, I found DC Minimates! While I didn’t pick any up on this trip, I did manage to score a free poster showing some of the upcoming figures and when they are expected to be released. Start hunting DC and Minimate fans!

Aaron Eckhart is either confirmed as – or in negotiations to play – Harvey Dent, better known as Two-Face, depending on your sources. All in all, it sounds like it’s pretty much a done deal.

I remember the first time I really recognized who Eckhart was – I was watching The Core, and I thought, hey, it’s that guy! Thank God that’s not the high point of his movie career. Thank You For Smoking was of course his most notable recent role, and I’m personally hoping that we get to see much more subtlety and depth to Harvey Dent than what we had to see in Batman Forever. Of course, in Tommy Lee Jones’s defense, I’m pretty sure the crappiness of that movie had nothing to do with him.

TNI has a couple of interesting interviews up that both touch upon DC Comics action figures. First up is Ryan Mansaur, brand manager for DC Superheroes at Mattel. Next up is Georg Brewer of DC Direct.

I thought it was interesting to find out just how hamstrung Mattel is on the DC Superheroes line (the first decent answer to Marvel Legends from Mattel so far). DC Direct is similarly limited in their control since they contract sculptors instead of doing all the sculpting in-house like Toy Biz did. I always had reservations about DC Direct because of their inconsistency from line to line. Apparently, the outsourcing is the main reason at fault for that, but they are looking to correct that. I still think they underestimate the need for better articulation, but I’m a pretty hardcore Marvel Legends fan so you’d have a hard time convincing me otherwise.

After watching the awesomely amazing Batman Begins I was completely under the impression that Katie Holmes‘s character Rachel Dawes would not be returning in the next movie. Not for contractual reasons or anything like, that but rather simply because they seemed to insinuate that her relationship with Bruce as we had known it was not possible anymore, and that she was moving on with her life without him. For more on this see the last 5 minutes of Batman Begins.

Well as various sources are reporting Katie Holmes was offered 2 million dollars to reprise the role and turned it down, presumably to star in an intellectually devoid comedy starring Queen Latifa, and on top of that the studio is still looking to cast someone else as the character as Rachel Dawes.

It’s nearly impossible to tell where fact starts and speculation begins in all this. The fact that Katie was offered 2 million to star in the Batman Begins sequel Dark Knight, and turned the role down due to “scheduling conflicts” seems all we can be sure of. The question of whether her doing this retarded Queen Latifa movie is the source of her conflict could be mainly speculation as could the talk of there still being a desire to cast someone else as Rachel Dawes instead of simply working around the charcter not being in the film, as there is no reason for a sequel not to be able to work if she weren’t returning.

[Read the rest of this entry…]