The sound bites at the end of this video look entirely staged, and the ride itself appears pretty timid.

Six Flags Great Adven­ture today unveiled the highly antic­i­pated “THE DARK KNIGHT Coaster.” Based on Warner Bros. Pic­tures’ upcom­ing movie THE DARK KNIGHT, the indoor, dark coaster offers guests a one-of-kind ride experience.

More than just a ride, THE DARK KNIGHT Coaster fea­tures the most world renowned DC Comics char­ac­ters in an adven­ture that uti­lizes sto­ry­telling, phys­i­cal move­ment, video, sound and spe­cial effects to bring guests a one-of-a-kind dark ride thrill. As part of the expe­ri­ence, park guests will see, hear and feel the action of the movie the moment they enter the ride queue line, as they are trans­formed into cit­i­zens of Gotham City — caught in the mid­dle of a city under siege and torn apart by The Joker.

Guests board a Gotham City rail car and careen through six 180-degree hair­pin turns, climb unseen hills, plunge into pitch dark­ness, dip into unfore­seen dan­ger and con­tinue to be tor­mented by The Joker as they thrust onto the bat­tle­field of good vs. evil. Will THE DARK KNIGHT save them in time?

“THE DARK KNIGHT Coaster offers guests a one-of-a-kind ride expe­ri­ence that com­bines the action and excite­ment of THE DARK KNIGHT movie with the thrill of a roller coaster,” said Mark Kane, Six Flags Great Adventure’s Park Pres­i­dent. “THE DARK KNIGHT Coaster offers a unique expe­ri­ence that will appeal to both fam­ily and teen audiences.”

The attrac­tion also intro­duces new, cus­tomized footage fea­tur­ing Dis­trict Attor­ney Har­vey Dent (as por­trayed by Aaron Eck­hart), pro­duced and shot specif­i­cally for THE DARK KNIGHT Coaster. The ride also incor­po­rates audio and visual ele­ments from the film which will debut July 18, 2008, offer­ing guests a sneak peak.

The $7.5 mil­lion coaster is located in the Movi­etown sec­tion at Six Flags Great Adven­ture adja­cent to BATMAN The Ride. The height restric­tion is 42 inches to ride with an adult and 48 inches to ride alone. Guests can receive up-to-the-minute park news and pur­chase a 2008 sea­son pass online at www​.sixflags​.com.

In speak­ing with Empire Online, Bryan Singer con­firmed that he will now be focus­ing on the Super­man Returns sequel, with an aim to direct once the project is ready:

“I’m just get­ting back with writ­ers after the strike. We’re just in the devel­op­ment phase. I’m start­ing to develop a sequel…with the inten­tion of direct­ing it.”

Maya from Char­ity Buzz has asked us to men­tion their lat­est auc­tion, which has a prize a good few of you shall be inter­ested in — the chance to attend the Dark Knight pre­mière and after party in Los Ange­les this July, with flights included. The pro­ceeds will be going to the New York Restora­tion Project. Bid­ding starts at $3500, with an esti­mated value of $7500. The auc­tion ends on May 29, 2008 12:58:00 PM EDT. Avail­able to both US and Inter­na­tional bidders.

“Fly to LA with Jet­BLUE and Attend the Pre­mière and After Party of The Dark Knight“
This Pack­age Includes: 2 tick­ets to Pre­mière & After Party. Pre­mière will be held in LA, July 2008– exact date TBD PLUS roundtrip air­fare for 2 from JetBLUE.

Bid on Dark Knight pre­mière tickets

Dona­tions from the char­i­ty­buzz online auc­tion will help the non­profit New York Restora­tion Project (NYRP) to reclaim, restore, and develop under-resourced parks, com­mu­nity gar­dens, and open space in New York City, pri­mar­ily in eco­nom­i­cally dis­ad­van­taged neighborhoods.

Super­hero Hype have posted some images of pro­mo­tional card­board you are likely to see in your local movie the­ater in the com­ing month. It’s the cut-out ver­sion of the bat-pod poster:

Weta’s fully func­tional Warthog build was on dis­play at Armaged­don in Welling­ton, NZ. NZGamer were at the scene to cap­ture some close up shots:

Cin­ema Notizie has posted an exclu­sive Prince of Per­sia movie poster. Whether this is gen­uine is debat­able, and given the dis­tinct lack of any offi­cial pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial being released, I would guess that this is fake. Although it’s still an inter­est­ing and atmos­pheric poster:

A pro­mo­tional newslet­ter released by Dolby for this year’s ShoW­est con­tains a list of upcom­ing 3D fea­ture films in 2009 — at the very bot­tom is Trans­form­ers 2, amongst Avatar and Tintin.

Via Comics2film

Moviehole spoke with Rachael Tay­lor and con­firmed that she will not be appear­ing in the sequel:

“I wasn’t con­tracted for a sequel any­way, but I also think it would be pretty ridicu­lous for my char­ac­ter just to show up and say ‘We’ve got some more com­put­ers to play with!’.

More impor­tantly, I don’t think I’d wanna do it to be hon­est, and not for any par­tic­u­lar rea­son other than the fact that I’ve done it. I’m just drawn to doing dif­fer­ent things. It was the same when I went to the U.S, I didn’t want to do TV, because I’d done it. I want to be able to mix it up all the time.”

Well, that’s that.