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.

Transformers 2 producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has been speaking with the IESB, mainly about GI Joe, but there were some Transformers 2 tidbits in there also:

IESB: Can you give us a quick update on Transformers 2. Is it still planned for shooting in July of 08?

LDB: The second, June 2nd.

IESB: Is the story locked?

LDB: We’re nowhere because of the strike, we won’t know until we come back. We have a very fine outline and we know exactly where we want go with the movie but until this writers strike comes back, we’ll find out exactly where we are. Michael is completely on top of every detail. He’s designed a lot of great stuff already. He’s got a lot of great sequences imagined but you know, he needs some writers to work with before he’s ready to go, so I would say June 2nd is an unofficial start, it’s the target date we’d like to go for but, you know, we’ve got to get some writers to help us.

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.

Gamasutra recently had a sit down talk with Prince of Persia creator, Jordan Mechner. I’ve posted the majority of the interview here because it provides a huge amount of insight into the development of the movie adaptation, and who am I to paraphrase Mr Mechner.

There’s been buzz about the Prince of Persia movie. Who’s producing? Who’s directing?

Jerry Bruckheimer is producing for Walt Disney Pictures. Mike Newell [ Donnie Brasco, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire] is the director.

What’s it like working with Jerry Bruckheimer?

I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, but he is extremely focused, detail-oriented and completely unflappable. Things that most people might consider a crisis — hurricanes, strikes, whatever — he handles very calmly and somehow it all works out. I can see why the studios feel confident entrusting him with hundreds of millions of dollars. If he’s making the movie, everything’s gonna be OK.

Is Ubisoft involved or does your license agreement allow you to do this separately?

They’re separate deals. Ubisoft has the videogame rights to Prince of Persia and Disney has the film rights.

How long has the script been in development?

I wrote the first draft and several revisions over a period of about a year and a half. Two more years of development followed, in which additional revisions were done by (in this order): Jeff Nachmanoff, Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard.

That sounds like a crazy number of writers, but the original screenplay structure, plot and characters have survived the whole process pretty much intact.

It’s still very much the same movie John August and I pitched to Disney and Bruckheimer back in 2004 — it’s been streamlined in certain ways, souped up in others. It’s a good, solid story and I think it’ll be very satisfying on screen.

What are the differences between writing for a video game and writing for a film? How closely does the movie storyline correspond to the games?

If you summarize the movie in one sentence, it sounds identical to the first Sands of Time videogame, but scene by scene it’s actually completely different. It has to be, because games and film are such different mediums.

On the surface they’re deceptively similar — you can watch five minutes of an action-adventure videogame and think “this could be a movie,” or vice-versa — but structurally the requirements are totally different.

Here’s one example: The game kicks off with a cataclysm that basically destroys the world and turns all living creatures except for the three main characters into raging, murderous sand monsters. That was a great setup for the gameplay we had, which was “acrobatic Persian survival horror.”

But if you put that setup in a film, it would be a “B” movie, and that’s not the kind of movie Prince of Persia should be. Our model is classic epic, swashbuckling action-adventure movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Zorro, and Thief of Baghdad, with humor and romance and full of memorable characters. You can’t get there if you turn everybody into sand monsters on page fifteen.

I hope Sands of Time game fans will see the movie with an open mind and judge it based on the experience it creates for them, not by the standard of how closely it matches the 2003 video game. The game still exists and you can still have the experience of playing it. We’re not destroying it by making the movie. We’re creating something new that has to stand on its own, just as the game did.

Will there be a game title that goes along with the movie? Are there any new games in the works separate from the movie?

Sorry, but I can’t answer that question!

How close is the movie to starting filming and how does the strike affect it?

The movie is in pre-production. At this moment there’s no way to know how long the writers’ strike will last, or if the directors’ and actors’ guilds will strike as well. It’s a very insecure time for the whole industry.

A lot of big movies that were set to go, now aren’t. I was really hoping that Mike Newell would be the one to direct this movie and I was ecstatic when he agreed, but it was bittersweet because I only had about 24 hours to rejoice before the writers’ strike began.

I support my guild and the writers’ cause, so until the strike is resolved I can’t meet with Newell and the Bruckheimer execs or contribute further to the development of the movie. It’s frustrating because I’ve been dreaming of a Prince of Persia movie, basically, for 20 years, and now at this key moment when the project has finally found the right director and he’s brimming with enthusiasm and excitement, I can’t even meet with him.

Rumors are quickly circulating around the internet that the two stars of Superman Returns – Superman himself, Brandon Routh and director Bryan Singer, will not be returning for the sequel. The Variety Blog explained why we may be unlikely to see Bryan Singer taking part in the film:

Speaking of DC Comics pics, it is highly unlikely that Bryan Singer will return to shoot the next Superman movie. (The director is finishing up Tom Cruise’s Nazi film Valkyrie, and prepping The Mayor of Castro Street).

This is a rumor, and we need to wait for confirmation from studios that this is the case. For now we can hold our breath.

And for a seemingly double blow, Latino Review suggested for a moment that Brandon Routh would also be out. However, the ever faithful and reliable Aint it Cool News entered into the fray to get some reliable closure on the issue:

I just got off the phone with a very high-ranking mole who is absolutely in a position to know what’s happening with this film, and he tells me that it is “absolutely false” that Brandon Routh is out as Superman for the stand-alone series.

The only thing that has been determined is that JUSTICE LEAGUE will not feature the actors from the other films. That’s it.

Right now, Routh is still Warner’s choice to return if they make another stand-alone SUPERMAN film, and that’s based on conversations as recently as a few weeks ago.

Don’t believe this one, kids. Routh’s still the Man of Steel.

It seems like the whole crazy rumor originated through rumblings in the Justice League movie camp.

Hollywood Reporter have an unconfirmed article stating that the release date for Transformers 2 has slipped from June 26th 2009 to a now “unslotted date“, possibly being pushed back to a 2010 release. This is all speculation at this point, as I cannot find a reliable source to confirm this. Though any delays can in all likelihoods be linked to the WGA strikes.

We’ll keep you posted.