Corona | Coming Attractions

How many photos would it take to make you a happy internet reader today? Eighteen, you say? Then thank IESB for this batch of beautiful, beautiful stills that some anonymous person leaked online. See Batman in action, the Joker in action, Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent, the stunning Gotham-at-night shots (thank you, DP Wally Pfister!), and…more than one Batman? Huh?!

No Two-Face shots, though. Wonder when those are coming?

Spoilers: More tidbits from Slashfilm’s Peter Sciretta about happenings in the Dark Knight, including a couple close calls for the secret of Bruce Wayne’s secret identity.

Peter Sciretta over at Slashfilm has some spoilers about moments in The Dark Knight concerning the Joker, Rachel Dawes, and an extra Batman.

Even though it was on Variety’s list of the top ten most-anticipated films at Comic-Con, Surprisingly, there was little official presence of The Dark Knight at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con – no footage, no panel of Nolans and Goyer and Bale.

So did Warners use the geekfest to (a) launch the Dark Knight viral marketing campaign at whysoserious.com, (b) create a virtual scavenger hunt that revealed the teaser trailer and a new pic of the Joker, (c) create an army of faux Jokers (faux-kers?) – fans who came together to get their faces painted clown white, or (d) hire a plane to write a phone number in the sky over the San Diego convention center which, when called, played a message from a nervous hostage reading a note from his clown of a kidnapper? The answer is, (e) all four. Not bad for not having an official presence at the con (all this per Variety).

A smile, a knife, and thee on a summer’s day… Warner Bros. lets loose another Joker pic, this one with pasty-face menacing lovely Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Ledger looks better and better, and we can’t believe we have to wait a bloody year till this film comes out. Argh…

There’s also a new teaser trailer, but as Slashfilm notes, as cool as it is after all the photos that have hit online, it feels like we’ve already seen a lot of this before.

The Dark Knight teaser trailer is online! That crafty Joker put it up on his website, www.whysoserious.com, and you can download it as well. Get ready for an amazing performance by Heath Ledger as the mentally unstable (but extremely cunning and, in his own way, logical) Clown Prince of Crime, and some ominous lines by Batman, Bruce Wayne and Alfred that foreshadow the bleak territory it looks like this one is traveling into (and, hopefully, through). The Dark Knight looks like a dark night indeed.

A scooper for Superherho Hype writes in with a description of the Dark Knight teaser trailer that’s coming out next Friday (expected to be attached to The Simpsons Movie) and says it’s fantastic. Find out what he said, but beware that -- even though he doesn’t give away everything -- there are some spoilers in his review.

The Joker has a website! And he might be recruiting an army at Comic-Con! Moriarty at AICN gives the lowdown as to what’s happening at the San Diego Comic-Con – such as dollar bills found on the streets defaced with the Joker’s makeup and “WhySoSerious” – which ain’t bad considering that we’d all heard there would be no Dark Knight presence at SDCC this year. Looks like this is going to be an interesting weekend, no matter what city you’re in.

And not only that, but the *real* Dark Knight teaser has leaked online, and it’s nothing like the description that Superhero Hype’s scooper sent in Sunday. You can find the real pirated teaser on YouTube and a number of other sites, but get it quick because you know Warners is burning up the intertubes with Cease & Desist emails as I type this!

Paul Fischer over at Dark Horizons did an exclusive interview with Aaron Eckhart, and he posts a few TDK snippets relating to the actor’s dual role as Harvey Dent and Two-Face. Eckhart talks about playing a character already played by Tommy Lee Jones, working on a Chris Nolan set (all are from the unedited transcript). Here’s a taste:

"Well there’s several hooks for me, none of which I can talk about, but I will say that I like the character. I like playing this guy." Eckhart also says that the film is "really a mirror of our times in a lot of ways. It’s a comment on what’s going on in the world today. And my character fits into that really nicely. And everybody’s character does from Lieutenant Gordon to the Joker."

Entertainment Weekly has the first look at the new Bat suit, and Superhero Hype has a scan of Entertainment Weekly’s first look at the new Bat suit, and we have a link to Superhero Hype’s scan of Entertainment Weekly’s first look at the new Bat suit!

Take a look and see what you think. The pic shows a much more defined, armor-plated suit. Do you dig it?

The Dark Knight is going big big big, at least for a few scenes. Warner Bros. President of Production Jeff Robinov announced today that, for the first time ever, part of a major feature film will be shot directly in IMAX format (as opposed to being shot in 35mm and being remastered in IMAX). This means that if you’re watching The Dark Knight in an IMAX theater, when these scenes show up the aspect ratio shifts to 1.43 to 1 and the scenes are magnified (literally and figuratively).

Robinov said that director Christopher Nolan is shooting four scenes in IMAX, including the prologue that intros the Joker that was shot in April.

Today, the Joker gets face time on the net.

Everyone needs their own website, even The Joker. Enter whysoserious.com, which just debuted with a puzzle and a gift for Bat fans worldwide. Fans clicked away one pixel at a time to reveal the first picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker, and what a disturbing pic it is: a close-up of the Joker’s face that’s so monochrome it’s almost black and white except for that smear of red (paint? blood?) forming a scarlet "grin" across his mouth. And it looks like that red is hiding some very serious scars on either side of his mouth, maybe extending his mouth into a permanent "grin". Horrible, and we’re horribly curious to see how this all plays out in the actual film. You can check out a large picture of Ledger-as-Joker on Empire Online.

Johnny Smith, welcome to Gotham City! Yes, John Hughes fave, ’80s SNL cast member, and Dead Zone star Anthony Michael Hall has signed on to the Dark Knight.  Hall told the LA Daily News that he signed a confidentiality agreement and can’t tell anyone what part he’s playing because "it’s a $200 million surprise, and I don't want to be the guy to ruin it." What’s up Mr. Nolan’s sleeve now, we wonder? Will AMH be another villain? Or maybe a hero?

So that Harvey Dent defaced poster from yesterday? Today it’s gone on the site, replaced by a "PAGE NOT FOUND" message. But there’s more to these jokers than meets the eye…

What’s more, we found out that if you look at the page source (PS users can right-click and select “Page Source” from the menu), then copy all that text into a document and delete the HTML and the laughing (lotsa “HA HA HAs” in there), you get this:

                                                see You IN DECeMbER

Latino Review discovered that 42 Entertainment, the publicity company that’s done all this great Dark Knight viral marketing, has registered the URL www.seeyouindecember.com. So the only question is, what’s coming in December? A trailer, we hope.

Our first look at the Joker? That’s what it looks like. Some prankster has created a website just like Harvey Dent’s, even using Dent’s campaign poster as the home page, but gone and defaced it. Is nothing sacred?

What’s even scarier is if you stay on that page for a few moments. The picture changes to a photo of what is probably Heath Ledger as the Joker: the familiar white clown makeup, and here his eyes are smudged black (his eyes are closed, so no idea if there are contact lenses). There’s also a thick smear of red across his lips extending onto his cheeks – and each cheek has a large horrible scar extending from the corner of the mouth.

In case you missed it, Latino Review has a snap of the image in question.