VideoBusi­ness are report­ing that The Dark Knight is pro­jected to ship over 1 mil­lion Blu-ray units to retail for its Decem­ber 9th launch. Ear­lier this year Iron Man set the record for the fastest sell­ing blu-ray disk, with over half a mil­lion copies sold in its first week.

Warner knows that with Dark Knight’s wild pop­u­lar­ity and Blu-ray-friendly spe­cial effects, the title should be a win­ner at retail. How­ever, the stu­dio will still be greas­ing the wheel with many soft­ware bundling pro­mo­tions in order to encour­age cus­tomers to buy Blu-ray play­ers in time for the Dec. 9 Dark Knight bow.

A 2 CD spe­cial edi­tion of the Hans Zim­mer and James New­ton Howard sound­track fea­tur­ing bonus remixes and new tracks will be released on Decem­ber 9th.

From the press release,

‘The Dark Knight: Orig­i­nal Motion Pic­ture Sound­track’ returns with the ASCAP-winning com­posers from Bat­man Begins– Hans Zim­mer and James New­ton Howard for a pow­er­ful orches­tral score. The Spe­cial Edi­tion fea­tures the com­plete score on two CD’s plus four bonus remix tracks; it also con­tains an 8x8x40 page hard­bound book.

Disc: 1
1. Why So Seri­ous?
2. I’m Not A Hero
3. Har­vey Two-Face
4. Aggres­sive Expan­sion
5. Always A Catch
6. Blood On My Hands
7. A Lit­tle Push
8. Like A Dog Chas­ing Cars
9. I Am The Bat­man
10. And I Thought My Jokes Were Bad
11. Agent Of Chaos
12. Intro­duce A Lit­tle Anar­chy
13. Watch The World Burn
14. A Dark Knight

Disc: 2
1. Bank Rob­bery (Pro­logue)
2. Buyer Beware
3. Halfway To Hong Kong
4. Decent Men In An Inde­cent Time
5. You’re Gonna Love Me
6. Chance
7. You Com­plete Me
8. The Fer­ries
9. We Are Tonight’s Enter­tain­ment
10. A Watch­ful Guardian
11. Why So Serious?(The Crys­tal Method Remix)
12. Poor Choice Of Words(Paul van Dyk Remix)
13. Gun­pow­der And Gasoline(Remix by Mel Wes­son)
14. Rory’s First Kiss(Remix by Rye­land Allison)

Buy the Dark Knight 2 Disc Spe­cial Edi­tion Sound­track from Ama­zon | Offi­cial Score Website

In speak­ing with the LA Times and asked whether Bat­man would par­tic­i­pate in any DC crossovers, Christo­pher Nolan responded,

Nolan: I don’t think our Bat­man, our Gotham, lends itself to that kind of cross-fertilization. It goes back to one of the first things we wran­gled with when we first started putting the story together: Is this a world in which comic books already exist? Is this a world in which super­heroes already exist? If you think of “Bat­man Begins” and you think of the phi­los­o­phy of this char­ac­ter try­ing to rein­vent him­self as a sym­bol, we took the posi­tion — we didn’t address it directly in the film, but we did take the posi­tion philo­soph­i­cally — that super­heroes sim­ply don’t exist. If they did, if Bruce knew of Super­man or even of comic books, then that’s a com­pletely dif­fer­ent deci­sion that he’s mak­ing when he puts on a cos­tume in an attempt to become a sym­bol. It’s a para­dox and a conun­drum, but what we did is go back to the very orig­i­nal con­cept and idea of the char­ac­ter. In his first appear­ances, he invents him­self as a totally orig­i­nal creation.

GB: That doesn’t lend itselt to hav­ing him swing on a rope across the Metrop­o­lis skyline.

Nolan: No, cor­rect, it’s a dif­fer­ent uni­verse. It’s a dif­fer­ent way of look­ing at it. Now, it’s been done suc­cess­fully, very suc­cess­fully, in the comics so I don’t dis­pute it as an approach. It just isn’t the approach we took. We had to make a deci­sion for “Bat­man Begins.”

GB: A dif­fer­ent path…

Nolan: Yes, com­pletely dif­fer­ent. It would have given a very, very dif­fer­ent mean­ing to what Bruce Wayne was leav­ing home to do and com­ing back home to do and putting on the cos­tume for and all the rest. We dealt with on its own terms: What does Bat­man mean to Bruce Wayne, what is he try­ing to achieve? He has not been influ­enced by other super­heroes. Of course, you see what we’re able to do with Joker in this film is that he is able to be quite the­atri­cal because we set up Bat­man as an exam­ple of intense the­atri­cal­ity in Gotham. It starts to grow out­ward from Bat­man. But the premise we began with is that Bat­man was cre­at­ing a wholly orig­i­nal thing. To be hon­est, we went even fur­ther than the comics on this point. I can’t remem­ber at what point in the comics his­tory the idea came about that he was a fan of Zorro as a kid. I haven’t researched that, but I don’t believe it goes back ter­ri­bly far.”

The inter­view con­tin­ues by dis­cussing Nolan’s next project, his time off and the upcom­ing Acad­emy Awards:

GB: You’ve said you aren’t sure what you next project will be. But clearly Warner Bros. looks at Bat­man as a core part of their movie busi­ness, per­haps now more than ever, and there are mar­ket­place pres­sures on them to sched­ule the next install­ment of the fran­chise. Are you get­ting a lot of pres­sure to make a decision?

Nolan: They’re being extremely gra­cious. I have a very good rela­tion­ship with the stu­dio. They know that I really needed to go on hol­i­day and take some time to fig­ure what I want to do next. They’ve been very respect­ful of that, which is ter­rific and one of the rea­sons I enjoy work­ing with Warner Bros.

GB: The nom­i­na­tions for the 81st Acad­emy Awards will be announced in Jan­u­ary. How mean­ing­ful would it be for the cast and crew of “The Dark Knight” if the late Heath Ledger is nom­i­nated for best sup­port­ing actor?

Nolan: I think the thing that has always been impor­tant to me in light of Heath’s death is the respon­si­bil­ity I’ve felt to his work. The respon­si­bil­ity of craft­ing the film in such a way that his per­for­mance came across the way he intended. Clearly, that has been the case. That’s one of the rea­sons I take such pride in the film.

I felt a great wave of relief, really, as peo­ple first started to see the per­for­mance and it was clear that they were get­ting the per­for­mance. It’s easy to for­get with every­thing that’s hap­pened what an enor­mous chal­lenge it was for Heath to take on this iconic role. He rose to that chal­lenge so admirably that any expres­sion of peo­ple being excited or moved by his per­for­mance is a won­der­ful thing. What­ever form that takes. Peo­ple com­ing to see his per­for­mance and get­ting it. It’s been extremely sat­is­fy­ing for all of us already. Any­thing that adds to that would be wonderful.

In other news,

News reported by Pro­duc­tion Weekly (an indus­try pub­li­ca­tion), has indi­cated that it is expected that pre-production for bat­man 3 should start in Feb 09.  It also lists Christo­pher Nolan as dire­tor but this is yet to be con­firmed by Warner Bros. or indeed Christo­pher Nolan.  How­ever we would all be sur­prised if he isn’t gonna be involved.  We sit and wait for the offi­cial announcement.

Our atten­tion has recently been drawn to some cool Dark Knight wall­pa­pers on TVwall​pa​pers​.co​.uk.  Here are some exam­ples of the best ones:

In antic­i­pa­tion of a Dark Knight awards push, our caped cru­sader shall be return­ing to the huge sil­ver IMAX screens early in 2009, so report Reuters — just before the acad­emy awards vot­ing sea­son begins. Whether tra­di­tional the­aters shall also carry the re-release has not been clarified.

New cut?

So lets start the rumorang going around — what are your thoughts on the pos­si­bil­ity of an alter­na­tive cut on the re-release? It would cer­tainly get more bums on seats.

Titanic’s record

With a sec­ond release com­ing, could this push The Dark Knight beyond the cov­eted $600m mark?

Thanks Antuon!

In a state­ment released by the IMAX corporation:

IMAX Cor­po­ra­tion and Warner Bros. Pic­tures today announced that The Dark Knight: The IMAX Expe­ri­ence has crossed the $55 mil­lion mark in world­wide gross box office receipts after its sev­enth week of release. As of Fri­day, the film reached a total of $43.2 mil­lion from 101 IMAX screens domes­ti­cally and $12 mil­lion from 41 IMAX screens internationally.

“The excep­tional box office per­for­mance of The Dark Night in IMAX® the­atres is con­tribut­ing to the film’s very strong legs and fan­tas­tic sum­mer the­atri­cal run,” said Dan Fell­man, Pres­i­dent of Domes­tic Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Warner Bros. Pic­tures. “Many repeat cus­tomers are expe­ri­enc­ing the film in IMAX theatres.”

“Chris Nolan’s inno­v­a­tive vision is tak­ing IMAX’s for­mat to new heights, and his film’s impact on ticket sales is unprece­dented,” said IMAX Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs Richard L. Gel­fond and Bradley J. Wech­sler. “The abil­ity to cross this mile­stone so quickly shows us that more peo­ple are vis­it­ing IMAX the­atres than ever before, under­scor­ing the real poten­tial and appetite for The IMAX Experience®.”

In all the debate about the sequel to The Dark Knight, a lot of peo­ple sug­gested the pos­si­ble return of Har­vey Dent and the Two Face char­ac­ter. In an inter­view with Com­ing Soon, Aaron Eck­hart has con­firmed once and for all that Har­vey Dent is dead. It is also inter­est­ing to hear that the orig­i­nal plan was to bring The Joker back for the third movie, whether that will still hap­pen is highly debatable.

CS/SHH!: Is Har­vey Dent alive?
Aaron Eck­hart: No. He is dead as a door nail.

CS/SHH!: So he’s not com­ing back?
Eck­hart: He ain’t com­ing back baby!

CS/SHH!: I was hop­ing he would.
Eck­hart: No. I asked Chris [Nolan] that ques­tion and he goes, “You’re dead” before I could even get the ques­tion out of my mouth. “Hey Chris, am I?” “You’re dead!” Alright, cool.

CS/SHH!: That’s not a prob­lem in comic book movies. You could still come back.
Eck­hart: I think in con­tract nego­ti­a­tions it’s a problem.

CS/SHH!: So you were never signed on for another film?
Eck­hart: No, I’m not com­ing back. I think unfor­tu­nately, Heath [Ledger] was sup­posed to go on and that didn’t work out. I’m nobody. I’m a cog. I have no say over this sort of stuff. I’m sure that there’s so many other char­ac­ters that they could whip together. I heard Angelina Jolie was going to be Cat­woman or some­thing like that. I thought that was a great idea. I’d like to be in that one.

Would you want to see a Joker played by some­one other than Heath Ledger?