MTV (via /Film) have got the scoop on some awe­some look­ing Dark Knight ‘Busts’ and fig­ures of Bat­man and The Joker, plus some props:

Com­ing­Soon have posted some high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos of The Dark Knight’s Bat­pod, from the ShoW­est Las Vegas convention:

Warner Broth­ers have today reveal the offi­cial web­site for Bat­man: Gotham Knight. There’s very lit­tle infor­ma­tion on the site at the moment, but it does include snip­pets of the video doc­u­men­tary we recently saw leaked on YouTube — with a lot more animé, help­fully the site comes with some copy and paste embed code:

Vari­ety have some impor­tant and sig­nif­i­cant news for us about the Prince of Per­sia movie adap­ta­tion. It seems that direc­tor Mike Newell has been scout­ing loca­tions in Morocco, with stu­dio work tak­ing place at Pinewood, Eng­land. With shoot­ing set to start in mid-June.

Choice of Morocco as a shoot­ing loca­tion will be a boost for the North African country’s film biz.

[…]

“Pro­duc­ers are always look­ing for cheap places to shoot and Morocco is one of them,” said Dune Films’ Jimmy Abounouom, who is rep­ping the Moroc­can shoot for Disney.

Dune execs pre­vi­ously han­dled the Moroc­can shoots of Tom Hanks star­rer “Char­lie Wilson’s War” and Kim­berly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss.”

“Prince of Per­sia” will also lens in Blighty’s Pinewood Shep­per­ton stu­dios. Project is in pre-production. Abounouom told Vari­ety he expects the Moroc­can sec­tion of the shoot to start in mid-June, labor wran­gles notwithstanding.

Thanks to Net­tle (Caitie)

The NYTimes have posted a very inter­est­ing Dark Knight report which closely fol­lows Chris Nolan’s work as direc­tor. It is a must read, even if the minor plot spoil­ers in the first para­graph would put you off. I’ve included some choice excerpts for you below, along with the new images that fea­ture in the article.

In so many ways this isn’t what you’d expect of a $180 mil­lion Hol­ly­wood comic-book movie sequel with a zil­lion mov­ing parts, a cast of thou­sands and sets from here to Hong Kong. Any­one else would shoot indoors, use dig­i­tal effects or wait for clear skies; Mr. Nolan rolls with the weather’s punches, believ­ing that the messi­ness of real­ity can’t be faked. Another film­maker would leave a shot like this in the hands of a second-unit direc­tor, but Mr. Nolan doesn’t use one; if it’s on the screen, he directed it, and his long­time cin­e­matog­ra­pher, Wally Pfis­ter, worked the cam­era. Stars on any other movie would have fled to their trail­ers to wait in com­fort until needed again. Here, Gary Old­man is watch­ing and shiv­er­ing along with every­body else, crack­ing jokes to keep warm.

[…]

Now the ques­tion is whether Mr. Nolan’s vision of Bat­man can not only main­tain its hold on the imag­i­na­tions of comic fans and crit­ics, but expand its reach to a wider sum­mer moviego­ing audi­ence, even as the death of Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” has added unan­tic­i­pated mor­bid­ity to the film’s delib­er­ate darkness.

[…]

“As we looked through the comics, there was this fas­ci­nat­ing idea that Batman’s pres­ence in Gotham actu­ally attracts crim­i­nals to Gotham, attracts lunacy,” he said. “When you’re deal­ing with ques­tion­able notions like peo­ple tak­ing the law into their own hands, you have to really ask, where does that lead? That’s what makes the char­ac­ter so dark, because he expresses a venge­ful desire.”

[…]

Will Mr. Ledger’s death cast a pall over “The Dark Knight,” whose tragic plot turns already make it much darker than “Bat­man Begins”? “We’ll see,” said Mr. Robi­nov, of Warner Broth­ers. Mr. Nolan, for his part, said he felt a “mas­sive sense of respon­si­bil­ity” to do right by Mr. Ledger’s “ter­ri­fy­ing, amaz­ing” performance.

Ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com, a long time offi­cial Dark Knight web­site — orig­i­nally host­ing a mere cam­paign poster has now gone online — pre­sent­ing us with a fully func­tional “vote Dent” viral web­site, com­plete with Dent mobile.

Fans shall now be enlisted to help out with Har­vey Dent’s polit­i­cal cam­paign to elect him as Gotham City’s Dis­trict Attor­ney. See what you need to do, then sub­mit your details to the web­site, with images and video (dead­line March 26th).

Rec­om­mended things to do: 

Get your friends together and spell out Har­vey Dent in human let­ters
Get a video of your school’s cheer­lead­ing team yelling out chants for Har­vey Dent
Try to cover every square inch of someone’s cubi­cle area with Har­vey Dent posters
Write and per­form a “Take Back Gotham” song
Make up a “Dent Dance” rou­tine
See if you can get up a Har­vey Dent sign in every sin­gle win­dow of your dorm build­ing
Turn your own car into a “Dent­mo­bile”
Arrange a Dent parade down Main Street
Make a human pyra­mid with other Har­vey Dent supporters

Down­load a ZIP of all the high res­o­lu­tion Har­vey Dent pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial (7 PDFs, 3.5mb)

The Dent-mobile shall also be touring:

The future of Gotham City is in our hands now, peo­ple! Let’s get out there and make some noise!

Wiz­ard Uni­verse have had a sit down chat with Aaron Eck­hart (Har­vey Dent). This inter­view reveals a lot of juicy bits about Two-Face and Har­vey Dent’s role in The Dark Knight — direct from the Horse’s mouth. As a warn­ing, this inter­view does con­tain spoilers!

WIZARD: Direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan said he saw Two-Face and Har­vey Dent as the back­bone of “Dark Knight.” Did you draw inspi­ra­tion from the comics or the older movies?
ECKHART: Chris [Nolan] comes at this with such a dif­fer­ent take on Bat­man, so I didn’t feel that I had to be true to any other actor play­ing this role. Of course, I read the comic books. His rela­tion­ships with Lt. Gor­don and with Bat­man, with Gotham City, those really helped me the most.

There are a lot of dif­fer­ent ways that you could go with the Two-Face per­for­mance, […]Where will you take it when the film opens July 18?
I believe that it’s stronger if you have a heart. If you can relate to a char­ac­ter who’s a vil­lain, or not, it’s always bet­ter. If I can help you to relate to my char­ac­ter, then I think that I’m more likely to keep your attention.

In terms of the heart of the char­ac­ter, Har­vey has gone through a large arc. Will we be see­ing Harvey’s full arc here or will it play out in, say, another movie?
I think with the other [films], you’re look­ing at the cli­max of a character’s arc. Where does he go after that? I think that right now we’re show­ing who Har­vey was before he was scarred, and it’s an inter­est­ing role that he plays. We’re look­ing at Gotham City try­ing to get out of its dark­ness. That’s why Har­vey is important.

Does Har­vey get scarred in this movie or will we have to wait until the next one to see that?
Har­vey Dent turns into Har­vey Two-Face in this movie. So that answers your ques­tion bet­ter. [Laughs]

Have you filmed a lot of scenes in makeup?
I have done scenes as Har­vey Two-Face. It’s inter­est­ing. I won’t tell you exactly what we’re going for, but I think that I can say that it will use all of today’s tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate this char­ac­ter. He’s going to be inter­est­ing, and I think that’s what makes this char­ac­ter impor­tant in the movie—you get to see him as he was before, as in the comic books. Har­vey is a very good guy in the comic books. He’s judi­cious. He cares. He’s pas­sion­ate about what he loves and then he turns into this char­ac­ter. So you will see that in this film.

[…]

There are cir­cum­stances that cre­ate the darker side of his per­son­al­ity…
It’s inter­est­ing to show that there are rea­sons for his behav­ior. It depends on which [of Harvey’s per­son­al­i­ties] you think is more attrac­tive and excit­ing. Obvi­ously a guy who goes out and mur­ders peo­ple, that’s vig­i­lante jus­tice. It’s prob­a­bly more cin­e­mat­i­cally excit­ing, but I think that know­ing why he got there and that he was a cool dude before is impor­tant, as well.

Are you say­ing you see Two-Face as more of a vig­i­lante in this as opposed to his clas­sic por­trayal as a bank-robbing, blow­ing sh– up kind of thug?
Well, I mean, in terms of vil­lains and movies, in anyone’s moti­va­tion in a movie you’re always try­ing to improve your lot in life and to exact your own code in life and I think that Har­vey Two-Face has a code, and his code is killing peo­ple for rea­sons that…will remain secret.

Game Trail­ers has the “world exclu­sive” on the Bat­man Lego video game trailer. Not based on The Dark Knight fran­chise, this still looks like it will be great fun to play:

In other news, here’s a video pre­view of the upcom­ing Six Flags Dark Knight roller-coaster.