In antic­i­pa­tion of a Dark Knight awards push, our caped cru­sader shall be return­ing to the huge sil­ver IMAX screens early in 2009, so report Reuters — just before the acad­emy awards vot­ing sea­son begins. Whether tra­di­tional the­aters shall also carry the re-release has not been clarified.

New cut?

So lets start the rumorang going around — what are your thoughts on the pos­si­bil­ity of an alter­na­tive cut on the re-release? It would cer­tainly get more bums on seats.

Titanic’s record

With a sec­ond release com­ing, could this push The Dark Knight beyond the cov­eted $600m mark?

Thanks Antuon!

We posted these rumors a short while back (along with a Jolie Cat­woman one), but now some news of this cast­ing has come from the lips of Michael Caine in speak­ing with MTV:

“They’ve already got them in mind,” said Caine, when asked who he’d like to see take up arms against the Caped Cru­sader. “It’s Johnny Depp as The Rid­dler. And The Pen­guin is Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man. I read it in the paper.”

So Caine is like the rest of us, read­ing gos­sip in the tabloids, right? Except for one thing…according to the actor, he con­firmed the news through the stu­dio itself.

“When Christo­pher [Nolan] said we were going to do ‘The Dark Knight’ next, I didn’t what that meant in Bat­man terms,” related Caine, who plays Bruce Wayne’s loyal but­ler, Alfred Pen­ny­worth. “I said, ‘What’s the story?’ and he said The Joker. I said, ‘Oh, s–t! How are you going to top Jack [Nichol­son]?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve cast Heath Ledger. And I went ‘Ha! I couldn’t top Jack, but if any­one could, maybe Heath could.’ And he did.

“I was with [a Warner Bros.] exec­u­tive and I said, ‘Are we going to make another one?’ They said yeah. I said, ‘How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says ‘I’ll tell you how you top Heath — Johnny Depp as The Rid­dler and Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man as The Pen­guin.’ I said, ‘S–t, they’ve done it again!’” [Laughs]

No doubt there will be some offi­cial clar­i­fi­ca­tion of this announce­ment in the com­ing days, how­ever what is inter­est­ing is the clear inten­tion for The Pen­guin and The Rid­dler to star in the third movie, whether Depp or Hoff­man sign on is another mat­ter — and one that I still don’t see being con­firmed for a long while yet.

How do you feel about The Rid­dler and Pen­guin poten­tially appear­ing in Bat­man 3?

In a state­ment released by the IMAX corporation:

IMAX Cor­po­ra­tion and Warner Bros. Pic­tures today announced that The Dark Knight: The IMAX Expe­ri­ence has crossed the $55 mil­lion mark in world­wide gross box office receipts after its sev­enth week of release. As of Fri­day, the film reached a total of $43.2 mil­lion from 101 IMAX screens domes­ti­cally and $12 mil­lion from 41 IMAX screens internationally.

“The excep­tional box office per­for­mance of The Dark Night in IMAX® the­atres is con­tribut­ing to the film’s very strong legs and fan­tas­tic sum­mer the­atri­cal run,” said Dan Fell­man, Pres­i­dent of Domes­tic Dis­tri­b­u­tion, Warner Bros. Pic­tures. “Many repeat cus­tomers are expe­ri­enc­ing the film in IMAX theatres.”

“Chris Nolan’s inno­v­a­tive vision is tak­ing IMAX’s for­mat to new heights, and his film’s impact on ticket sales is unprece­dented,” said IMAX Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs Richard L. Gel­fond and Bradley J. Wech­sler. “The abil­ity to cross this mile­stone so quickly shows us that more peo­ple are vis­it­ing IMAX the­atres than ever before, under­scor­ing the real poten­tial and appetite for The IMAX Experience®.”

In all the debate about the sequel to The Dark Knight, a lot of peo­ple sug­gested the pos­si­ble return of Har­vey Dent and the Two Face char­ac­ter. In an inter­view with Com­ing Soon, Aaron Eck­hart has con­firmed once and for all that Har­vey Dent is dead. It is also inter­est­ing to hear that the orig­i­nal plan was to bring The Joker back for the third movie, whether that will still hap­pen is highly debatable.

CS/SHH!: Is Har­vey Dent alive?
Aaron Eck­hart: No. He is dead as a door nail.

CS/SHH!: So he’s not com­ing back?
Eck­hart: He ain’t com­ing back baby!

CS/SHH!: I was hop­ing he would.
Eck­hart: No. I asked Chris [Nolan] that ques­tion and he goes, “You’re dead” before I could even get the ques­tion out of my mouth. “Hey Chris, am I?” “You’re dead!” Alright, cool.

CS/SHH!: That’s not a prob­lem in comic book movies. You could still come back.
Eck­hart: I think in con­tract nego­ti­a­tions it’s a problem.

CS/SHH!: So you were never signed on for another film?
Eck­hart: No, I’m not com­ing back. I think unfor­tu­nately, Heath [Ledger] was sup­posed to go on and that didn’t work out. I’m nobody. I’m a cog. I have no say over this sort of stuff. I’m sure that there’s so many other char­ac­ters that they could whip together. I heard Angelina Jolie was going to be Cat­woman or some­thing like that. I thought that was a great idea. I’d like to be in that one.

Would you want to see a Joker played by some­one other than Heath Ledger?

Here’s the next big record that is beyond everyone’s expec­ta­tions — The Dark Knight has notched up a mas­sive $500m in domes­tic sales in only 45 days, after an $11m week­end tak­ing. It took Titanic, the only film that has sold more than the Dark Knight and the only other film to break the half a bil­lion bar­rier, 91 days to do that.

To add to this, The Dark Knight has now made $921m world­wide (major over­seas releases came out much later than the US), putting in 9th in the all time world­wide best sellers.

Source: Com­ing Soon

Despite being bounced from the weekend’s top spot by Topic Thun­der ($25.8m beat­ing $16.3m), The Dark Knight has amassed a mas­sive $471.5m in five weeks — fly­ing past Star Wars to become the sec­ond high­est domes­tic gross­ing movie of all time. Bat­man dealt a dou­ble blow by keep­ing the ani­mated Clone Wars in third place for the week­end ($14.1m).

Source: Box Office Mojo

The authen­tic Bat­man Returns Bat­mo­bile is being auci­toned off at the 38th Kruse inter­na­tional auc­tion on Labor day. View the auc­tion.

“Other less valu­able non-movie pro­mo­tional Bat­mo­biles have sold for as much as $550,000.00! This authen­tic movie mas­ter­piece is expected to bring a record price. The Warner Bros. & DC Comics sales approval agree­ment clearly authen­ti­cates that this is the num­ber “3” “Movie” Bat­mo­bile. All inter­ested Bat­mo­bile bid­ders should notify Kruse Inter­na­tional 1– 800 968‑4444 ASAP. This is your chance of a life­time to become the owner of this awe­some piece of movie his­tory. BILL OF SALE ONLY FROM WARNER BROTHERS.”

Thanks to /Film

Joblo got the down and dirty with a full 167 page PDF of The Dark Knight script, as avail­able in the “Art of The Dark Knight” book.

Down­load The Dark Knight Script

(or down­load it from Joblo: Joblo Down­load)

Thanks jb/ysosrs!