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.

The read­ers over at /film have sent in some very cool Dark Knight pro­mo­tional items — a beau­ti­ful Joker card set donned with the phrase “Why So Seri­ous”, the Bat­man logo and the film’s release date and a white t-shirt with a hideous Joker grin sprawled across it.

Remem­ber those delights we dis­cov­ered in the Bak­eries? — the attached cell phone, clues, joker cards, etc? Well that phone has become active again, send­ing out creepy texts from the Joker to his newly recruited gang of cake eaters. The brand spank­ing new Hol­ly­wood Chicago received this in the mail:

I have the cell phone and I just got a text mes­sage from the Joker today from humanresources@​whysoserious.​com. Here’s what it said:

“You still out there, clown? Reply and let me know.”

I replied “yes” and I got another response:

“See you found my lit­tle mes­sage. So do you think you have what it takes to be a part of my cir­cle of friends? Are you a back­stab­bing, self…”

Then the mes­sage gets cut off. Oth­ers I have talked to with the phone have said the same thing. I am sure this is an auto­mated response.

I replied back “yes” to the last text and I am wait­ing to see what hap­pens. I will keep you updated!

~ Vlkers54

 *fin­gers crossed*

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.

I’m not sure if this is offi­cial or just some fans hav­ing a laugh, but I think it’s worth show­ing you guys any­way. This mon­stros­ity was spot­ted by Gianni V at the Edwards Ontario Palace in Ontario Cal­i­for­nia. Is this the first part of a new Dark Knight adver­tise­ment cam­paign? I per­son­ally doubt it.

First reported by our friends at /Film.

A pos­si­ble plot out­line for The Dark Knight has seem­ingly been leaked online, our email tells us this is from a reli­able source, but adds a dis­claimer that fake plots may be spread amongst the TDK team to put us off the scent.

There may be spoil­ers ahead, but that should go with­out say­ing. Head over to Bad­taste to read the pur­ported Dark Knight plot out­line, if you want to ruin the ending.

Christ­mas has been and gone, and, after get­ting our lit­tle trailer, gift wrapped in a pre­ced­ing viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign, we have all sat back and relaxed (whilst get­ting fat on choco­late). The Dark Knight news has since been sparse, not a lick of viral mad­ness since Santa came around. Though you can guar­an­tee that it will all kick off again as soon as we get a whiff of that next mar­ket­ing scheme.

In the mean­time, Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal has been speak­ing with the British pub­li­ca­tion Metro about her role in the Bat­man flick (and also sexy under­wear it seems):

Is your Bat­man char­ac­ter a damsel in dis­tress?
There are moments of that. Chris Nolan, the direc­tor, would joke about how I had to resign myself to being a lit­tle bit of a damsel in dis­tress but he pushed me in other ways to make her a pow­er­ful char­ac­ter. I play a lawyer and have real rela­tion­ships with the peo­ple I’m inter­act­ing with in the movie. She’s very smart and a real rounded per­son. Of course, if you’re the girl in Bat­man, you’re going to be a damsel in dis­tress to some extent but she’s a really great char­ac­ter. So many peo­ple I play are a mess; Rachel’s really clear about what’s impor­tant to her and unwill­ing to com­pro­mise her morals, which made a nice change.