As there is cur­rently no major viral mar­ket­ing tak­ing place, it seems the right time to fill you in on all the smaller Dark Knight sto­ries that have been float­ing about.

Advance Book­ings

The Dark Knight, with the same amount of times to release as Spider-man 3, has sold over eight times as many tick­ets, with a major­ity of those being at IMAX the­aters, report Movi​et​ick​ets​.com via Film School Rejects. To put that into per­spec­tive — Spider-man 3, which was eight times behind, opened to a $150 mil­lion week­end with the record for largest open­ing week­end ever. This also comes from Fan­dango:

With less than three weeks remain­ing till “The Dark Knight” opens on July 18, at 12:01 a.m., Fan­dango, the nation’s lead­ing movie­goer des­ti­na­tion, is find­ing that dozens of show­times for the film are already sold out. (Buy Tick­ets)

Bat­pod and Tum­bler on Tour

The Bat pod and the tum­bler are doing the rounds, tour­ing a num­ber of cities before the movies’ pre­mière. Head­ing to:

• Phoenix
• Den­ver
• St. Louis
• Cleve­land (July 6)
• Kansas City
• Cincin­nati (July 5)
• Wash­ing­ton, DC
• Philadel­phia
• Boston
• Toronto
• Nia­gara Falls, NY
• New York City
• Chicago

July 5 the dis­play will be at Kings Island in Cincin­nati, Ohio from 12:00om to 2:00pm and then be trans­ported to the Show­case Cin­ema de Lux & IMAX in Spring­dale, Ohio and be on dis­play from 3:30pm to 5:30pm that afternoon.

For Cleve­landers, the good will be on dis­play at the Cin­e­mark Val­ley View on Sun­day July 6 from 8:00am to 5:00pm.

Kevin Smith Reviews TDK

On his blog, Kevin Smith posted a short review after the lucky man caught a pre­view screening:

With­out giv­ing any­thing away, this is an epic film (and trust me: based on the sheer size and scope of the visu­als and sto­ry­telling, that’s not an over­state­ment). It’s the “God­fa­ther II” of comic book films and three times more earnest than “Bat­man Begins” (and fuck, was that an earnest film). Eas­ily the most adult comic book film ever made. Heath Ledger didn’t so much give a per­for­mance as he dis­ap­peared com­pletely into the role; I know I’m not the first to sug­gest this, but he’ll likely get at least an Oscar nod (if not the win) for Best Sup­port­ing Actor. Fuck­ing flick’s nearly three hours long and only leaves you want­ing more (in a great way). I can’t imag­ine any­one being dis­ap­pointed by it. Nolan and crew have cre­ated some­thing close to a masterpiece.

On Set

SHH were lucky enough to visit The Dark Knight’s set dur­ing film­ing, with a chance to spend time with the cast for an interview:

Writer/Director Christo­pher Nolan
Chris­t­ian Bale — Bruce Wayne/Batman
Aaron Eck­hart — Har­vey Dent/Two-Face
Crow­ley, Hen­ning & Old­man — Pro­duc­tion Designer, Cos­tume Designer and Com­mis­sioner Gordon

Give­aways

IESB Give­away
Film School Rejects Giveaway

(If I had some swag I’d give it away too, hint hint)

No Robin in Bat­man 3

Chris­t­ian Bale has ruled out an appear­ance of Robin in the next and any sub­se­quent sequals of The Dark Knight, put simply:

If Robin crops up in one of the new Bat­man films, I’ll be chain­ing myself up some­where and refus­ing to go to work.

Gotham Knight (July 8th release)

Fea­ture from Wiz­ard World 08

TV Spe­cials

HBO will air a first look of The Dark Knight on July 10th, 2008 at 10:45pm east­ern. The His­tory chan­nel will also be run­ning a pro­gram look­ing at the his­tory of Bat­man on July 16th in an hour long spe­cial. Thanks Victor!

Heath Ledger Designed his own Makeup

Or so Screen Rant tell us (thanks Tiffany):

“he [Heath] showed up with a very basic make-up kit con­sist­ing of store bought mas­cara, white grease paint and lip­stick and and basi­cally designed the make-up there on the spot”

The clues from the lat­est Why So Seri­ous viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign have led us to the stu­pid bats page con­tain­ing a brand new Dark Knight poster made up of Joker cards and scratched Joker ramblings:

The prize for the Oper­a­tor puz­zle was a new arcade game, “Punk Drop”:

whysose​ri​ous​.com/​p​u​n​k​d​r​op/

The aim is to knock down the “punks”. If you hit a dummy, a light appears next to another one, if you hit that one the light moves to the next dummy, and so on. If you com­plete three lit dummy hits in a row a ticket comes out of the machine, link­ing to a new “Stu­pid Bats” page:

whysose​ri​ous​.com/​s​t​u​p​i​d​b​a​ts/

A new Viral chal­lenge has been unveiled at whysose​ri​ous​.com/​o​p​e​r​a​t​or/ through a new text from the Joker:

Wake up, clown! You have *one hour* to reply to be a part of today’s fun. /operator

Fol­low­ing a reply, this was sent:

Good. Do not reply again. I’ll be in touch…

After the hour dead­line, par­tic­i­pants were sent code words:

Work together, clowns. Your code-word: XXXXXXXX. Your part­ner: XXX-XXX-XXXX. Do NOT call until told to. Do not pub­li­cize this number.

Wait for a call — you will receive one or more code words. Relay these words to your partner.

You’re the first in the chain. Call your part­ner and relay your code-word NOW.

When all “relays” were com­pleted, all five chains had dropped and five words are shown, these all have the word “house” in com­mon, enter­ing that into the box reveals a new game, “Punk Drop”.

Thanks Pierre!

Why So Seri­ous have updated their front page for the first time in what seems an age — it now cov­ers the entire Viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign com­plete with Joker check­list on tasks, a list of Gotham city web pages and assorted items that can all be clicked for part of the viral adven­ture. For exam­ple, bowl­ing shoes, a per­son­al­ity quiz, the trailer clip­pings, let­ters from a ran­som note, etc.

Three future tasks have yet to be ticked off:

12. Be good to my guests
13. Gather all my fans
14. Leave a big mark

Reports

Some of the viral links on WSS con­tain reports on the viral event, with date, a list of occur­rences, the end result, pic­tures and the after­math — pro­vid­ing a suc­cinct review of how we’ve got this far:

Cit­i­zens for Batman

Where a page orig­i­nally stood we now find a count­down, head­ing omi­nously towards July 8th. CFB have also been send­ing out their pro­pa­ganda to lucky Gotham citizens,

Includ­ing the letter:

Cit­i­zens for Batman!

It’s time to go pub­lic. To really defend Bat­man, we have to show the world how big our move­ment is. So check out the good­ies inside and show your pride in CFB!

And get ready for a MAJOR show of force July 8th. (check out cit​i​zens​for​bat​man​.org for the latest.

Defend Gotham. Defend Batman!

Brian Dou­glass
Founder, Cit­i­zens for Bat­man

Thanks Dioz, Csam and Pierre!

Domi­nos have unveiled their lat­est part in the ongo­ing Dark Knight pro­mo­tional cam­paign — a vault filled with good­ies, includ­ing an extended trailer with new footage. There are wall­pa­pers and many fea­tures still listed as com­ing soon, such as a mobile game, a new trailer and inter­views, pre­sum­ably with cast and crew.

Domi­nos Dark Knight Vault

Thanks Pierre, Tim, Anton, Linda, Csam!

EDIT: This has been con­firmed a fake.

Seib­ertron have posted a cam­era phone shot of what looks like a Revenge of the Fallen poster, though it is blurry and hard to make out. It is most likely a fake, but on the small off chance that it is not, I have posted it here:

The text at the top seems to read “… begins”. The auto­bot in the fore­front is quite clearly one that we have not seen before, yet it is also dif­fi­cult to identify.

Via /Film

A new video from the Smith­son­ian Air and Space Museum at Dulles, VA has popped up, show­ing Shia, Bay and Megan Fox at work: