The offi­cial Har­vey Dent web­site, “ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com” has been updated to include a new mes­sage and some text entry boxes for your email and phone number,

“We have the power to change Gotham City, soon you’ll find out how”

On doing so you get a quick con­fir­ma­tion email reading:

Cit­i­zens of Gotham! The future of our city rests in your hands! Alone, we are help­less against the thugs and killers men­ac­ing our city. Together, we have the power to take back Gotham. In just a few days, you’ll find out how. Please click … to ver­ify your e-mail address. Keep an eye on http://​www​.ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com and get ready to join a move­ment that will trans­form our city!

It looks like the sec­ond major viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign shall be focus­ing around Har­vey Dent, rather than the Joker, which falls in line with the rumors we have heard con­cern­ing the third Dark Knight trailer.

Via Hol­ly­wood Chicago and with thanks to Austin

DVD­Town got in first on this one, with thanks to Ghell who sent this in.

Accord­ing to a just held press con­fer­ence Warner Bros. has some new excit­ing Bat­man releases on its way.

Bat­man Begins: Lim­ited Collector’s Edi­tion Gift Set [that’s a mouth­ful] will arrive on DVD and Blu-ray. The Bat­man Anthol­ogy box will also be released on Blu-ray.

Again, all titles should arrive this fall and will probaly be released along­side the lat­est Bat­man install­ment “The Dark Knight.”

All of us that have been fol­low­ing Ledger over the past few months knew this already, but it’s reas­sur­ing to get some con­fir­ma­tion. After all those defam­ing rumors cir­cu­lat­ing in the tabloid press, we can tell you that Heath Ledger did not pur­pose­fully take his own life.

From the BBC:

Hol­ly­wood actor Heath Ledger died of an acci­den­tal over­dose of six dif­fer­ent types of pre­scrip­tion drugs, New York author­i­ties have revealed. […] The city med­ical examiner’s spokes­woman said Ledger died “as the result of acute intox­i­ca­tion by the com­bined effects” of the dif­fer­ent drugs.

“While no med­ica­tions were taken in excess, we learned today the com­bi­na­tion of doctor-prescribed drugs proved lethal for our boy. Heath’s acci­den­tal death serves as a cau­tion to the hid­den dan­gers of com­bin­ing pre­scrip­tion med­ica­tion, even at low dosage.”

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)

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.

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.

Gotham Knight, aka the multi-part short story animé between Bat­man Begins and The Dark Knight, is expected to get a nov­el­iza­tion, so report The World’s Finest. With a planned release on April 29th, 2008.

The Warner Broth­ers web­site, thedark​knight​.warner​bros​.com, has now updated — click­ing the large blue logo takes you to a page with down­load links for high def­i­n­i­tion for­mats of the offi­cial trailer. They have also kindly pro­vided us with a nice high res­o­lu­tion, offi­cial copy of the third teaser poster that we have seen only through blurry cam­era shots of so far.