An announce­ment was made in July 2006 that Chris­t­ian Bale would con­tinue in the role of Bat­man in the sequel to Bat­man Begins. Warner Broth­ers also announced that Heath Ledger would play the role of The Joker, with actors actors Paul Bettany,Lachy Hulme, Adrien Brody and Robin Williams all pre­vi­ously rumored. At this same time Warner Bros. offi­cially ini­ti­ated the pro­duc­tion of The Dark Knight, using David S. Goyer’s treat­ment, co-written by Nolan.

The role of Har­vey Dent, Dis­trict Attor­ney of Gotham City and oth­er­wise known as Two-Face, was cast in Feb­ru­ary 2007, to be played by Aaron Eck­hart. Around this time, despite pre­vi­ous men­tions that Katie Holmes would return as Rachel Dawes, it was made known that Holmes would not be involved in the sequel, due mainly to sched­ul­ing con­flicts. In March this year Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal became the replace­ment. Anthony Michael Hall, of 1980s Break­fast Club fame, also has an unnamed role in the film.

Nolan’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bat­man fran­chise shall con­tinue to be very dif­fer­ent to that of its rede­ces­sors.  The Joker char­ac­ter is based pri­mar­ily on his first two appear­ances in the Bat­man comics, as well as Alan Moore’s one-shot comic book Bat­man: The Killing Joke.  Prin­ci­ple pho­tog­ra­phy began in April 2007, pushed back from March, begin­ning in Chicago between April 18th and 24th — shoot­ing scenes for the Joker’s pro­logue, as of June 9th they have returned to con­tinue film­ing there until early Sep­tem­ber. Ten­ta­tive film­ing loca­tions also include Lon­don, Liv­er­pool, Los Ange­les, Bal­ti­more, and Hong Kong.

Hans Zim­mer and  James New­ton Howard have con­firmed that they shall pro­vide The Dark Knight’s score.