MTV Splashpage has posted the first trailer to Batman: Year One, the latest movie in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies series. The movie is an adaptation of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One comic, and stars Benjamin McKenzie as Bruce Wayne, Bryan Cranston as Jim Gordon, Eliza Dushku as Catwoman and Katee Sackhoff as Sarah Essen. The movie will premier at San Diego Comic Con later this month, and will be released on October 18, 2011.

Less than two weeks ago DC Comics announced they would be relaunching their entire line of comics, and that in September they would release 52 #1 comics. Over the past two weeks DC has slowly been announcing the series and creative teams behind all the new #1 issues. To make your life easier, we’ve collected information about all the announced series into one place.

Full list of new series after the jump
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Yesterday Warner Bros. announced that The Dark Knight Rises had started filming, as well as launching the film’s official website. Along with this launch includes a social campaign that revealed the first photo of Tom Hardy as Bane.

At launch the official website was just a black image with some odd chanting playing. A deditcated fan looked at the visual spectrum of the chanting and noticed it contained a twitter hashtag of #thefirerises. As fans tweeted using that hashtag, on the official site an image started to be filled in using the twitter icon of people using the hashtag. The image is still being filled in, but /Film has posted the details of this social campaign and the high res photo of the finished picture.

Warner Bros has made many popular modern DC books into animated features over the last 4 years, and after getting their feet wet with fare like Under The Red Hood and New Frontier, they’re finally going to go for one of the biggest, baddest comics in their library: The Dark Knight Returns.

Returns tells the story of a 55 year old Bruce Wayne returning to his Batman identity after a decade’s absence. He confronts Harvey “Two Face” Dent, The Joker, and Superman at various points in the story, and takes on a new Robin as his partner. The series, written and and drawn by Frank Miller, is one of the most highly regarded in the DC canon, and helped lay the blueprint for the dark and gritty Batman that is best known today.

WB had a real misfire in their first animated production, re-writing and altering The Death and Return of Superman into a standalone 75 minute feature. Literally dozens of issues and hundreds of characters were cut from the story, and the movie still felt rushed. By comparison, choosing shorter stories (no more than 6 issues) to adapt has worked well for WB, and the bulk of The Dark Knight Returns should make into a fine animated feature. There are some thematic elements that may push WB beyond their usual PG-13 rating, but I certainly hope the original story makes it through unmolested.

Elements of The Dark Knight Returns were present in a Batman The Animated Series episode, “Legends Of The Dark Knight.” In it, 3 children share stories about what they know about Batman. One of the kids is a dead ringer for TDKR’s Robin, Carrie Kelley, and her tale depicts a 5 minute sequence almost directly lifted from the page of Batman fighting the Mutant gang. Michael Ironside provided the voice of Batman in this sequence, and would honestly make a fine choice to reprise the role in a full feature. See a clip at the bottom of this article.

An animated production of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One is already nearing completion, and is expected to premeire at Comic Con 2011 in San Diego, with a DVD/Blu Ray Release following.

Tip via Joey O and [Bleeding Cool]

Didn’t read the original book? Its never too late to catch up on the classics.

Milk, it does a body good. Laura Hudson of ComicsAlliance.com and attendee of WonderCon 2011, observantly noted the above print for sale at Greg Horn’s table.

This post includes a press release as that will take you the rest of the day to read, but here are the basics…

Cartoon Network historically has had huge success with shows based on DC Comics characters (JLU, Batman Brave And The Bold) as well as Warners Bros Animation (Looney Toons, Ben 10), and so they’re ordering several new series as well as renewing some successes.

The hotly anticipated Green Lantern The Animated will follow in the footsteps that Batman The Animated series did in 1992 by bringing a character to the small screen following a big movie opening. Differing from previous DC animated presentations is that this GL series will be entirely computer animated, unlike the past 19 years of Batman, Superman, and other series.
Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corp will join the renewed Young Justice and Batman Brave and The Bold as part of the “DC Nation” block, which the press release implies may see other DC properties down the line. Safe bet on some of the DC direct to video movies over the last 3 years such as New Frontier and Under The Red Hood airing in these slots as well.

Thundercats is also now officially being announced as part of Cartoon Networks falls schedule from Warner Bros Animation. WB will also relaunch Looney Toons in a “contemporary” animated style. CN is renewing Ben 10 and Scooby Doo as well.

In related news, Cartoon Network has ordered a series based on the How To Train Your Dragon series of books and CG movie.

Rounding out the announcements: “LEGO Ninjago” which is a cartoon series based on ninjas made out of LEGO.

You may now read the press release.
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update: this story is false.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (and the rest of the cast of Inception) has been heavily favored to join the cast of Christopher Nolan’s next Batman movie. Now with Tom Hardy in place as Bane and Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, JGL will join the cast as Alberto Falcone.

You may recall Carmine Falcone was played by Tom Wilkinson in Batman Begins, and his empire was shattered by Batman and Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. Alberto Falcone is his son in the Batman fiction, and may be entering the story to reclaim the family business.

However, Nolan has borrowed from The Long Halloween before, and its likely that Alberto won’t just be another mob boss but will instead be The Holiday Killer. Holiday was a serial killer whose first murder occurred on Halloween, (then Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc) and continued until the following Halloween with the murder of Carmine Falcone.

As of The Dark Knight, Carmine is still being held in Arkham, after a dose of Scarecrow’s psychotic drugs. Its unknown how this might fit in with Bane or the possibility of Catwoman, but both of those characters are tied heavily to Gotham’s organized crime.

As casting news begins to slow down and filming not to far off, the full story is still hard to decipher. The Dark Knight had twists audiences didn’t expect that didn’t come from set reports and no script was leaked in advance. If The Dark Knight Rises can continue this momentum and use the wealth of characters to give the story life and depth rather than crowd it, we might have the first super hero movie series with a good third act.

Source: Variety