MTV had the scoop on this one,

The role of “Gam­ble” has offi­cially gone to Michael Jai White, the mus­cu­lar mar­tial artist/stuntman/actor best known for roles in such films as “Spawn” and “Exit Wounds.” Thomas and Roven also cleared up fan con­fu­sion over who, exactly, the bad­die is, explain­ing that Gam­ble is one of sev­eral mob bosses attempt­ing to take over Gotham’s streets now that Carmine Fal­cone (Tom Wilkin­son in the first ‘Bat­man’ flick) is out of the picture.

Chris­t­ian Bale has been talk­ing to MTV about The Dark Knight. Speak­ing about Heath’s por­trayal of the Joker, Bale con­firms that this incar­na­tion will be darker and grounded by real­ity,

“I think I should let Heath give you the answer on all this, cer­tainly I think that we dig a lit­tle more than the other movies did. […] we try to ground them in some­what more real­ity than the other movies.”

Check out MTV’s Bat­pod video here (only acces­si­ble from US).

Vari­ety are report­ing that Melinda McGraw (CBS’ “Cen­ter of the Uni­verse”) and Nathan Gam­ble (“Babel”) have joined the cast of The Dark Knight play­ing the wife and son of Jim Gor­don respectively.

ABC Local are run­ning a rather unevent­ful video from The Dark Knight set in Chicago, com­plete with over­head fly­ing helicopter.

Super­Hero­Hype has another spoiler filled set report.

At the Res­cue Dawn press event Super­Hero­Hype were there to quiz and talk to Chris­t­ian Bale about The Dark Knight. He had this to say about film­ing the sequel:

“Peo­ple aren’t ques­tion­ing, ‘Are they going to do it or not?’ [Refer­ring to suc­cess of Bat­man fran­chise after the Bat­man and Robin atroc­ity] There’s been an accep­tance of, ‘Yes, these guys know what they’re doing’ and also, because we got so famil­iar with each other… it’s now the third movie that I have made with Chris (Nolan) and Michael Caine. I’ve got­ten to know every­body. We all know how we all work. It’s like my 5th movie with the D.P. It just flies along because there’s no ques­tion in try­ing to sort of work each other out at all. We all know how we like to do it, and there’s a nice short­hand between us all in terms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

And when asked about out-doing Bat­man Begins and the pres­sures of build­ing on such a suc­cess­ful film,

“If we’re just doing the same, then what’s the point? There are peo­ple who should demand that. […] That would be the death knell, wouldn’t it? If we all got com­pla­cent, just said, ‘Oh, we just have to bang out the same thing we did before.’ Sure, we use the strengths, and we’re not going to dis­card the things that worked, but we’ve got to move for­ward as well.”

Super­Hero­Hype are also run­ning a new spoi­lerific report on some film­ing in Chicago.

And for fun, here’s Heath and Bale hav­ing din­ner together:

Sin­ga­porean actor Ng Chin Han, well known in his local arts scene but rel­a­tively unknown else­where, has got his first big break in The Dark Knight, so Chan­nel News Asia reports.

He had this to say about the inter­view process:
“The scripts that they let you read for the audi­tions are not the scripts for the exact film movie because everything’s so top secret. You get scripts that are printed on spe­cial paper that can­not be pho­to­copied, there are invis­i­ble water­marks, all kinds of things. You feel like a spy in a James Bond movie when you are look­ing at these scripts.” 

The char­ac­ter that Ng Chin Han will be play­ing has not been announced.

The Times has an inter­est­ing inter­view with Gary Old­man, it mainly cov­ers the new Harry Pot­ter film but he does offer up some tid­bits about what it’s like to play Jim Gor­don in The Dark Knight:

‘I don’t know how it hap­pened,’ Old­man says of his pigeon­hol­ing as a nat­ural born gang­ster. He speaks slowly. Very slowly. In clipped sen­tences. ‘I really don’t. I was this… psy­cho guy. I just got into these parts. Then it… it… con­t­a­m­i­nates peo­ple. And they think that you’re Crazy-Scary-Gary. The clos­est char­ac­ter to me,’ he adds with pon­der­ous grav­ity, ‘is Jim Gordon.’

[…]

I tell Old­man that the first word that comes to mind when you think of Jim Gor­don is ‘avun­cu­lar’. ‘Yeah,’ he replies with a light shrug. ‘Got a good sense of right and wrong. Fam­ily man. Just a reg­u­lar geezer.’

In other news, Dog Cus­tard have some new Bat­pod shots from the 2007 Licens­ing show here. And a Flickr image has orig­i­nated from Lil­Ron­Gal show­ing the film­ing of a rooftop scene (with a spoi­lerific surprise).

Super­Hero­Hype also has a set report which dis­cusses some scenes that have been filmed, obvi­ously you should beware of spoilers.

Finally, here’s a video show­ing the tum­bler on set, once again, more spoil­ers ahead: YouTube
There’s also another TDK set video from 20th June, of course, there are fur­ther spoilers.

Let us not for­get the lessons of His­tory; let us remem­ber why the orig­i­nal Bat­man fran­chise was destroyed so utterly and com­pletely. Bat­man — Robin — Bat­girl — Mr Freeze — Poi­son Ivy — Bane — Bat­plane — Bat­mo­bile, it had it all.

10 years ago today many a fan boy shed a tear. If you work in the film indus­try and you ever find your­self putting nip­ples on a cos­tume, think twice and get out while you still can.

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.