The Inter­na­tional Her­ald Tri­bune report that the major­ity of The Dark Knight’s Hong Kong film­ing has now been com­pleted. Scenes included “dozens of police offi­cers” storm­ing a sky­scraper in the finan­cial dis­trict, filmed late on Sun­day and early on Mon­day morn­ing; whilst ear­lier in the week Lucius Fox (Mor­gan Free­man) and Bruce Wayne were filmed hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion on a bridge near Lyn­d­hurst Ter­race. Bale also stated in a press con­fer­ence that he was sched­uled to jump from the “90 floor Inter­na­tional Finance Cen­ter”. And that he did — scroll down to see the ver­tigo induc­ing pic­tures of Bat­man stand­ing on the edge of the tall build­ing, and video of the encir­cling Helicopter.

The Press Con­fer­ence via BlipTV:

In this con­fer­ence Chris Nolan also debunked those pre­vi­ous rumors that a scene was aban­doned because of pol­lu­tion, cit­ing script changes as the real reason.You can find another enter­tain­ment round-up in this ITN video hosted on YouTube:

Hong Kong Videos:

A Round up of the HK Action and Bat­man Jump (pic­tures mon­tage and footage towards the end):

Police Storm­ing the Scene

Mor­gan Free­man being filmed:

Hong Kong News Reports:

Hong Kong Pictures:

Batman’s Big Jump:

High Res­o­lu­tion shots of the HK film­ing, from Chris­t­ian Bale Fan. Check out the link for lots more gal­leries and high res­o­lu­tion pic­tures of Bale and Free­man.

At the Air­port (via AICN):

Well, this was a turn up for the books and some­thing I didn’t really see com­ing. It seems that Jerry Bruck­heimer and Dis­ney have made an offer to Mike Newell (Harry Pot­ter Gob­let of Fire, Don­nie Brasco) to direct, accord­ing to Vari­ety. Nego­ti­a­tions are expected to begin in the com­ing week.

Thanks to John for the heads up.

Seems like there’s a heated Joker debate going on in this post. Well, to put some fuel on the fire MTV had a sit down chat with for­mer Joker, Jack Nicholson:

MTV: What do you think of another actor, Heath Ledger, play­ing the Joker in next summer’s “The Dark Knight”?

Nichol­son: Let me be the way I’m not in inter­views. I’m furi­ous. I’m furi­ous. [He laughs.] They never asked me about a sequel with the Joker. I know how to do that! Nobody ever asked me.

MTV: It was never brought up?

Nichol­son: No. It’s like, in any area, you can’t believe the rea­sons things do or don’t hap­pen. Not ask­ing me how to do the sequel is that kind of thing. Maybe it’s not a mis­take. Maybe it was the right thing, but to be can­did, I’m furious.

MTV: I’m sur­prised to hear you sound­ing com­pet­i­tive about a role like that.

Nichol­son: Well, the Joker comes from my child­hood. That’s how I got involved with it in the first place. It’s a part I always thought I should play.

Joker Spoil­ers:

For some more Joker related tales, head on over to Latino Review for some major plot spoil­ers con­cern­ing The Joker’s movie entrance.

It is also rumored that we might see a Dark Knight poster before the end of this month.

A num­ber of news crews were on hand to wit­ness some of the C-130 air­craft Hong Kong fly overs which took place today as part of The Dark Knight’s film­ing schedule:

Asso­ci­ated Press (2) | Reuters (2)

The Stan­dard have posted an arti­cle cov­er­ing the event. Once again it seems filled with more of their neg­a­tive com­men­tary — stat­ing that the fly overs failed to “thrill fans” and those that waited out­side to catch a glimpse of Bat­man or the bat sig­nal. I get the feel­ing they are not entirely happy with the TDK HK shoot.

Flickr user fer­nan­dogros (blog) has also man­aged to cap­ture some shots of an encir­cling Heli­copter, tak­ing some footage for the movie:

In other related news, Cybr­punk has posted some street clo­sures in the area to make way for Bat­man and his chums. Specif­i­cally, Novem­ber 9th between 2:00pm and 5:30pm on Lyn­d­hurst Ter­race and Cochrane Street:

Com­ing­Soon tell us that Nigel Phelps has been enrolled in the next stage of the live action Trans­form­ers saga. He has pre­vi­ously worked with Michael Bay on both Pearl Har­bor and The Island. This news comes via the Uni­fied Tal­ent Agency web­site, which attaches Phelps to the project.

The dead­line has passed and the chips are in, and it looks like the next Trans­form­ers movie missed the boat on this one. Vari­ety are report­ing that amongst a num­ber of other major sequels being planned, Trans­form­ers did not com­plete the writ­ing phase in time for the planned indus­trial action.

It seems that suc­cess­ful labor talks will now be nec­es­sary to kick-start the process and allow the sequel to hit the­aters on the pro­jected release date. We’ll cross out fin­gers on this one.

The LATimes report that the stu­dios have hired Ehren Kruger (The Ring, Arling­ton Road) to write the screen­play with orig­i­nal Trans­former writ­ers Alex Kurtz­man and Roberto Orci. The deal is expected to be in the region of $8m.

The arti­cle then dis­cusses the com­plex­i­ties of involv­ing these three busy par­ties in a sin­gle, man­age­able writ­ing schedule.

For the Hong Kong IMAX fly over scene Warner Broth­ers asked busi­nesses in the neigh­bor­hood to leave on their lights to pro­vide a stun­ning sky­line on film. How­ever Earth­Times (via Bat­MovieNews) report that 80% of the 60 com­pa­nies approached turned off their lights as per usual, pre­sent­ing The Dark Knight with a “blackout”.

The Hong Kong Stan­dard also report that there was no sign of the planned low fly­ing air­craft for the film­ing event,

C-130 air­craft and two heli­copters were due to take to the skies over Vic­to­ria Har­bour yes­ter­day dur­ing the film­ing of Bat­man: The Dark Knight.

But, so far, there has been no sign of the caped hero.

How­ever, no cause for this absence has been pro­vided and it may just be a result of re-scheduling.