Long has it been rumored that Mr. Hall, made famous for his appear­ances in those eight­ies films, was to play the infa­mous Edward Nygma, also known as The Rid­dler. Recent rumors, and if true, spoil­ers, have now sur­faced to debunk that the­ory — paint­ing the new role in an entirely dif­fer­ent light. This exclu­sive comes from the reli­ably informed Hol­ly­wood­Chicago.

These are spoil­ers, if you don’t want to know the scores, look away now (or just don’t hover to reveal the text):

Slash­Film picked up the scoop on this spoiler from one Tophrman, and the fore­warn­ings go: these could be fake, they could be real — either way you take some sort of risk in read­ing the details.

Con­tent hid­den, mouse-over it to reveal the spoilers:

• Har­vey Dent reveals him­self to be Bat­man at a wild press con­fer­ence at Supe­rior Court Dent.
• The National Guard patrols through down­town Gotham.
• At Wayne Enter­prises, a new char­ac­ter named Reese (played by Joshua Harto) tries to black­mail Lucius Fox using Batman’s identity.
• Bruce Wayne dis­cusses his plans for Lau (played by Chin Han) with Lucius Fox. But the real ques­tion is, who is Lau?
• Some­one breaks in to the Wayne Enter­prises’ Research and Devel­op­ment, and Fox is notified.
• Jim Gor­don explains “just enough” to get Har­vey Dent (Aaron Eck­hart) to issue search war­rants. For what, we don’t know.
• Jim Gor­don tells Com­mis­sioner Loeb (played by Colin McFar­lane) that his life is threat­ened, Loeb drinks to that.
• Har­vey Dent promises the Mayor a crime-free 18 months right before a fake Bat­man hits the May­ors Office window.
• A fake Bat­man hangs from the flag­pole out­side City Hall.
• Jim Gor­don tries to get Reese out out of the street entrance of a tv stu­dio, but an angry mob appears. Bruce Wayne serves as a dis­trac­tion. I won­der what Reese was doing on TV? May-be he was there to reveal Batman’s iden­tity? But if so, why would Bruce Wayne help him out? The actor play­ing Reese (Joshua Harto) looks pretty young. May-be he’s an up-and-coming reporter who some­how fig­ured out Batman’s true iden­tity? But this still doesn’t explain why there is an angry mob await­ing his exit from the building.

First up, we have some words from Paul Bir­chard (via indieWire). Non-too reveal­ing, they give us another fas­ci­nat­ing insight into Heath Ledger’s por­trayal of this famous character:

As regards to how Heath Ledger *seemed* as the Joker, he seemed like he WAS the Joker, and didn’t need to let any­one know it — rather con­tained, but ready to explode at any moment in an unex­pected fash­ion. Men­ac­ing, but more because he seemed like he was prob­a­bly crazy, and maybe vio­lent, rather than that he was TRYING to scare you. (and by the way, all he did dur­ing the scenes I was in was sit in his hold­ing cell, react­ing and listening…so, he’s a very fine actor if I imbibed all this from just watch­ing him sit there…) He didn’t talk a lot between takes, but he also wasn’t “Don’t approach me!” in his man­ner — a real pro, in other words.

In short, he seemed just like the Joker SHOULD seem.

Before more Joker — I am going to slip in this lit­tle link, be an Extra on The Dark Knight. And here is an RFK cast­ing call. (links via our friends at Bat­MovieNews)

Spoil­ers after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

My Fox Chicago are back with more can­did videos and pho­tog­ra­phy from this week’s filming.

And for the videos, the first shows the scene being shot in the above images and can be found here. The sec­ond video is from a slightly dif­fer­ent angle.

“We’ve got more behind-the-scenes footage from the ongo­ing pro­duc­tion of Bat­man: The Dark Knight going on right now in Chicago. These are from overnight last night into this morning.

In these clips, you can see Heath Ledger dressed as The Joker prepar­ing for a scene, and in the link after that, video of the scene being produced.”

Thanks for the heads up Steve.

Why So Seri­ous has departed, and in its wake has left behind a cheesy grinned clown site, right out of the bygone era of Geoc­i­ties. Quite annoy­ingly, the high res­o­lu­tion down­load links of the Dark Knight Teaser Trailer have been removed.

After the break we have some more on set images from Chicago, warn­ing, Spoil­ers ahead… Read the rest of this entry »

Today we have for you a fan­tas­tic set report from Chicago thanks to our tip­ster “Tony”, where he viewed first hand the action, dam­age and destruc­tion that trav­els along­side The Joker. Warn­ing, Spoil­ers ahead.

So I’m still at work and decided to look down at the street below and can see the crews set­ting things up for tonight. LaSalle is closed head­ing south of Mon­roe because it appears there is a “mock up” heli­copter in front of the Chase build­ing. Looks like it will be a fun night and I might actu­ally get to see some­thing blown up. An all-nighter at work is actu­ally a good thing tonight! My cam­era is ready to go so I will send pic­tures if I can get them.

He con­tin­ues,

Okay, so I went down­stairs and the Joker semi is right out­side my build­ings front door. There was a crew rig­ging stuff up inside the trailer and there was a dummy body lying on the ground. I also noticed they added “teeth” to the front of the truck (think of a cir­cu­lar saw). The Mer­cedes cam­eras were out and the PA said they were going to flip the truck end over end (cab over trailer). Lots of hydro­gen (gas) bot­tles in the back of a truck and Chicago PD every­where, along with fire trucks and ambulances.

And a short while later,

Patience is a virtue. I finally got to see real Bat­man action and it was well worth the wait.

I just wit­nessed the Joker’s semi being flipped over from the back to the front. It drove North on LaSalle and shortly after it crossed Mon­roe it did the flip. I would give it a 10 for nice form and degree of difficulty.

Turns out that the spikes in the front were for the front end to dig into the pave­ment to help it flip. Now the truck is crushed!!

Saw The Joker in full makeup hang­ing around in front of North­ern Trust Bank. He was doing things any vil­lan would do…high-fiving, text mes­sag­ing, smok­ing, and actu­ally look­ing bored.

And here are some pic­tures and the report summary:

So, I work for an invest­ment bank in down­town Chicago and had a great view of today’s film­ing action which was the Joker’s semi being flipped end over end. Heath Ledger was on hand in full makeup but not full wardrobe and there were a TON of peo­ple work­ing on the set. My view was much bet­ter than even Nolan’s and I was able to get this video and pictures.

If you look beneath the truck in the pic­tures you will see a black pis­ton and then “teeth” on the front grill. The pis­ton is what cre­ated the force to send the truck over and the teeth were used to dig into the asphalt to help flip it over.

The pic­ture of the white heli­copter shell is a prop. Appar­ently they blew up a heli­copter last night and did it again tonight. The helo was the start­ing point for the Joker’s semi and was on fire when I left work, after they flipped the truck. As I was walk­ing to the bus I saw just the cab of the Joker’s truck with a bul­let hole filled wind­shield but it was attached to a tow truck rigged w/ lights and pos­si­ble cameras.

MyFox Chicago were also on the scene and they have some higher qual­ity but ground floor footage of the event, which is also worth a watch. Thanks for the heads up Steve, check the video out here.

Tony came back to tell us this lit­tle bit of juicy gos­sip (beware, spoil­ers ahead):

Was walk­ing around today on Randolph/Washington and saw a brand new, Black Corvette Z06 parked with all of the trail­ers. On the dash­board there was a yel­low sign that said some­thing to the effect of “This car is to be used in film­ing. City of Chicago..blah, blah, blah.” I’ve heard that a new Lam­borgh­ini is sup­posed to be in the film but am curi­ous about the use of the Z06.

I also ran into some “secu­rity guards” when I was check­ing out the Bat­mo­biles and they told me that they filmed a scene the other night where The Joker jumped off of a building!

And today he sent this infor­ma­tion in:

On my way in to work this morn­ing I noticed “No Park­ing signs 7/26–7/30 for Film­ing” all over LaSalle, par­tic­u­larly head­ing South towards the CBOT. Also heard that a very explo­sive scene will be filmed Thurs­day night on Wells & Wacker.

X-Realms have also posted this film­ing report from El Eshoo:

The crew was set­ting up at a place where every­one can look down from the street above and just gawk. Lots of peo­ple in SWAT gear and what looked like Joker hench­men (assum­ing since they were in long black hooded robes and their faces sort of looked in makeup).

In this area were SWAT vehi­cles, Cop SUV’s, the Joker Semi (with bul­let holed wind­shield). A lot of crew peo­ple were wan­der­ing around get­ting ready for tonight’s shoot. Nolan was on hand to chat with crew and actors. Just then, from up the road, Gary Old­man comes run­ning up to the mid­dle where Nolan is stand­ing, stops with a hop, throws his arms out jok­ingly as if to say “Tah-Dah … I’m Here!” It was kinda goofy but funny.

Old­man (com­plete with that cheesy mus­tache) was putting on SWAT gear as well. So, I’m guess­ing he might be involved with the Joker/Semi chase. There was a SWAT Truck rigged with a cam­era in the pas­sen­ger win­dow and the SWAT truck was hitched behind a camera/main truck (where Nolan and com­pany can sit and direct. Just then, the Secu­rity told us to scoot since they were about to film.

I then decided to walk to Mon­roe St (on Upper Wacker, where rumored film­ing was to occur) to see what was up. There were peo­ple with Walkie-talkies about and fig­ured this was the spot. That’s when the rigged SWAT truck and some Gotham Police escort came down the road from the area we were just at. Basi­cally, what they did was did repeat street runs of the SWAT Truck and Police cars dri­ving from Upper Wacker to Lower Wacker via the ramp that heads down there. They did this over and over … noth­ing excit­ing. I guess this is what they meant by the “street level” film­ing that was to occur that night.

I headed back to the River (to view Lower Wacker stuff) to se what was up there. Saw some Tum­blers (2 were uncov­ered) down below but never saw them in action all night. Walked to where I’d seen the Bat­pods nights before. There were 3 of them (2 uncov­ered and 1 cov­ered). Never saw the Bat­pod in action either. In fact, when I returned later, all 3 were cov­ered. I didn’t stay all night so per­haps there were scenes shot in the wee morn­ing hours.

They did shoot some scenes on Lower Wacker with the Joker Semi and the SWAT Truck rid­ing along side (on other side of median) giv­ing chase. There were loud explo­sion sounds as they went by but it was dif­fi­cult to see exactly what they were from since there wasn’t any fire or bright light or smoke or any­thing. Also, pop­ping noises (gun fire) were heard, too.

Later on, they just made passes on Lower Wacker with only the SWAT Truck and some GPD cars. Noth­ing too crazy. For most of the night, I played good Samar­i­tan to peo­ple by telling them where to gawk at the Bat­mo­bile. I’m nice like that.

Be sure to check out the new can­did shots from Bat­man on Film and Hol­ly­wood Chicago

Not much to say on this one, just sit back, lis­ten to the revs and check out the brief clips:

Via Comics2film

And one more to boot: