These first glance images come via Just Jared, show­ing a shirt­less Jake Gyl­len­haal look­ing all hunky and manly as The Prince.

For the fourth con­sec­u­tive week The Dark Knight has topped the week­end box office, last week it fended off The Mummy, this week it held back the Pineap­ple Express. With sales of $7.6m, $10.5m and $7.9m, The Dark Knight amassed a week­end total of $26m, beat­ing the Pineap­ple Express’ $22.4m, and over­tak­ing Shrek 2 with a gross of $440m to become the third biggest sell­ing movie of all time. Star Wars sits pretty above it with $460m — it’s only a mat­ter of time!

Source: Box Office Mojo

Fol­low­ing Shia’s injury, and Michael Bay’s com­ments that the pro­duc­tion of Revenge of the Fallen would not be affected by the inci­dent, the Trans­form­ers 2 first pro­duc­tion unit has been put on a four week hia­tus to allow Shia to recover, accord­ing TFW2005.

There have also been somre reports that Shia needs to have his lit­tle fin­ger ampu­tated — these are unfounded.

The Art of The Dark Knight has been released with a full script along­side pro­duc­tion images and con­cept art.

The most inter­est­ing sec­tion in the book is the part cov­er­ing the early Joker designs — the below images illus­trate how grue­some and ter­ri­fy­ing the Joker could have been. They almost look like some­thing out of the Texas Chain­saw Mas­sacre.

Intre­pid inter­net scourer BatGirl567 has pro­vided links to two arti­cles dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the third Bat­man movie.

Cin­ema Blend believe that The Joker was orig­i­nally writ­ten into the first draft of a Bat­man 3 story and that all ref­er­ences have since been removed. I would inter­pret this as noth­ing more than rumor with no cred­i­ble source — mainly because their ‘scooper’ tells them that Two-Face will fea­ture promi­nently in the next film, “cov­er­ing his ori­gins” — the gen­eral con­sen­sus is that this will not hap­pen. They con­tinue to sug­gest that the graphic nov­els The Long Hal­loween and Dark Vic­tory will also be referenced.

With Two Face and the Joker gone, we need some new Vil­lains… MSNBC have some sug­ges­tions, although there are also some stark ommis­sions (Harley Quinn and Bane both being repeated sug­ges­tions in our ongo­ing dis­cus­sions). I have para­phrased, added pic­tures and pro­vided appro­pri­ate links.

Cat­woman and Talia al Ghul

[…] Jewel thief Selina Kyle [Cat­woman] is a habit­ual crim­i­nal, but she does adhere to a moral code of her own, even if it often puts her at odds with Batman.

[…] Talia al Ghul is per­haps even more com­pli­cated; she’s the daugh­ter of R’as al Ghul, some­times aid­ing her father’s plans for world dom­i­na­tion, and some­times sid­ing with her lover. Although Bat­man has repeat­edly foiled the ille­gal schemes of both father and daugh­ter, R’as approves of Batman’s romance with Talia and would like to see them mar­ried; in some sto­ries, Talia and Bruce Wayne even have a son.

Nolan-ability rat­ing: Cat­woman: A-. Talia al Ghul: B–
Cat­woman seems almost cer­tain to show up even­tu­ally if the cur­rent Bat­man series con­tin­ues. Talia, on the other hand, prob­a­bly won’t unless R’as al Ghul also returns, given her character’s inter­twined rela­tion­ship with both men.

Cos­tumed crime lords: Pen­guin, Black Mask, Scar­face and The Ventriloquist

[…] The dap­per, gen­tle­manly Pen­guin, […] is por­trayed these days in the comics as an eccen­tric but effi­ciently schem­ing crim­i­nal who con­trols much of Gotham City’s under­ground. Though this Penguin’s not as flam­boy­ant as past ver­sions have been, it’s still hard to take him seri­ously out of the comics’ oper­at­i­cally weird world, and Nolan him­self has said mov­ing Pen­guin into the movies would be “tricky.”

[…] Black Mask, a ruth­less and bru­tal crime boss who takes his name from his ebony skull dis­guise, and comes with the twist that he bears a grudge against Bruce Wayne rather than his Bat­man alter ego.

[…] Arnold Wesker, a mild-mannered ven­tril­o­quist who keeps a bloody grip on his crim­i­nal empire but will only speak though his dummy, Scar­face, a wooden doll carved to look like a 1930s gang­ster. [..] The duo would prob­a­bly be laughed out of the theater.

Black Mask would fit per­fectly, espe­cially if they need another vil­lain in Two-Face’s evil mode.

Nolan-ability Rat­ing: Pen­guin: D. Black mask: B. Scar­face: D.
FofR: Black Mask is an inter­est­ing sug­ges­tion; I wouldn’t want to see a new incar­na­tion of The Penguin.

Mon­ster men: Man-Bat, Killer Croc and Clayface

[…] Man-Bat is the Mr. Hyde-like dou­ble of sci­en­tist Kirk Langstrom, who trans­forms uncon­trol­lably into a giant winged mam­mal after a lab acci­dent. Killer Croc, sim­i­larly, is a mutated beast-man who’s slowly becom­ing less human and more croc­o­dil­ian over time. […] Clay­face, but the most well-known ver­sion is a blob­like crea­ture that can change its shape and eats humans to survive.

Nolan-ability Rat­ing: B+ for all three. “Overtly fan­tas­ti­cal ele­ments.“
FofR: Mon­sters in Nolan’s uni­verse? I don’t see it hap­pen­ing — the power of The Dark Knight lies with its sto­ry­line firmly rooted in reality.

The puz­zlers: The Rid­dler and Cluemaster

[…] Edward “Rid­dler” Nygma wears a trade­mark green suit cov­ered with ques­tion marks […]. His jester-like qual­i­ties some­times make him some­thing of a low-rent Joker, but lately in the comics he’s turned over a new leaf and rein­vented him­self as a detec­tive, solv­ing puz­zles instead of cre­at­ing them.

[…] Clue­mas­ter, who turned to a life of crime as after being fired from his high-profile TV job, with a sig­na­ture attention-grabber of leav­ing clues behind for Bat­man to fol­low. Even the Rid­dler, not exactly the least gim­micky of vil­lains, felt con­tempt for Cluemaster’s shtick, which he thought was a rip-off of his own.

Nolan-ability Rat­ing: The Rid­dler: B. Clue­mas­ter: D.
The Riddler’s appar­ently got a pretty good shot at a future film, if you can believe com­ments made recently by Gary Old­man [any­one have a link to these com­ments?]. “Doc­tor Who” star David Ten­nant report­edly would love to do it.

Penny Plun­derer

[…] Joe Coyne’s par­tic­u­lar pec­ca­dillo was pos­si­bly the most pathetic of any of them: He was obsessed with pen­nies, going to ludi­crous lengths to steal rare coins and one-cent stamps, and defended him­self by hurl­ing rolls of cop­per coins at Batman’s head.

Nolan-ability Rat­ing: C-. “He’d work as comic relief” — [no he wouldn’t]
FofR: No.

Chan­dell

[…] A pair of twins [from the 1960s tele­vi­sion show] — famous pianist Chan­dell and his evil brother Harry, who schemed to steal a for­tune from Batman’s Aunt Har­riet and black­mail his own brother in the bargain.

Nolan-ability Rat­ing: D-. […] “camp,” exactly what Nolan’s avoid­ing.
FofR: No.

Bat-Mite
[…] Bat­man has his own mag­i­cal imp who pops in every now and then to sow trouble.

Nolan-ability Rat­ing: F.
FofR: Not a chance, seems like this writer was lazy in their vil­lain short­list — seri­ously.. Bat Mite!?

Also, whilst I am going over the vil­lains, remem­ber Zsasz in Bat­man Begins?

Know a lot about Bat­man villains?

We’re look­ing for some peo­ple to make Bat­man 3 vil­lain pro­pos­als whilst pro­vid­ing some solid ground­ing to sup­port them. We’d like to have some arti­cles cov­er­ing the lesser known poten­tials for Nolan’s straight-up Bat­man uni­verse. Con­tact us

Here is the next big mile­stone in The Dark Knight’s all encom­pass­ing suc­cess at the Box Office — it is now offi­cially the fastest movie to reach the cov­eted $400m mark, doing so in just 18 days.

Would you like to know what the pre­vi­ous record was? Shrek 2 did this same feat, only a full 25 days later, tak­ing a whop­ping 43 days. The Dark Knight has more than cut that in half, and it’s still tak­ing in $6m in mon­day sales, whilst mov­ing up to 8th on the all time gross chart.

Con­tribut­ing Sources: /Film, Media By Numbers

Thanks Tim.

Latino Review have the exclu­sive on some con­cept are released to coin­cide with Stu­art Beattie’s Halo: Fall of Reach treat­ment which acts as a pre­quel to the Halo video game series. The image is by con­cep­tual artist Kasra Fara­hani (pre­vi­ous work includes Spider-man 3 and Han­cock) and is part of a larger pre­sen­ta­tion to Microsoft.

Accord­ing to Latino writer El May­imbe, there are some big time Hol­ly­wood pro­fes­sion­als that are also major Halo fans that want to see this movie made — let’s not give up hope yet.

Neill Blomkamp’s first big screen work has also started a viral stir at SDCC, Dis­trict 9 which looks very inter­est­ing. “For Humans Only”. Due for release next August, if this film can deliver the goods then the old Jackson/Blomkamp part­ner­ship may get its finan­cial back­ing after all.

We can also look for­ward to five more con­cept images being released over the next few weeks, stay tuned.

Mor­gan Free­man is in a seri­ous con­di­tion after a car acci­dent late on Sun­day night, trav­el­ing East­bound on Mis­sis­sippi High­way 32 in Tal­la­hatchie County. His Nis­san Max­ima edged off the road, and by over-correcting, Free­man flipped the vehicle.

Emer­gency crews pulled Free­man and his pas­sen­ger from the wreck using the “jaws of life”, before air­lift­ing to the MED in Memphis.

WMCTv​.com report that whilst crews were cut­ting Mr Free­man out, he was lucid and jok­ing with the res­cue workers.