This time we get to see the dash­ing GCPD police offi­cers. This first image is from Titan­Vi­su­als

Jeanne M. Grun­hard has also snapped a great shot of the Gotham City PD,

(Copy­right J.Grunhard, repro­duced with permission)

Kyle Marks also has some inter­est­ing set pic­tures, click the link to see a gallery of 24:

Via Super­Hero­Hype:

Vari­ety are report­ing that Melinda McGraw (CBS’ “Cen­ter of the Uni­verse”) and Nathan Gam­ble (“Babel”) have joined the cast of The Dark Knight play­ing the wife and son of Jim Gor­don respectively.

ABC Local are run­ning a rather unevent­ful video from The Dark Knight set in Chicago, com­plete with over­head fly­ing helicopter.

Super­Hero­Hype has another spoiler filled set report.

Speak­ing at the Hol­ly­wood and Game sum­mit keynote, Thomas Tull (Leg­endary Pic­tures Chair­man) pro­vided some rest-bite, ensur­ing us that the movie will be dealt with as nec­es­sary. He begins,

“We’re doing World of War­craft, and mak­ing it into a movie. I have very strong feel­ings — from the movie side — that mak­ing movies based on games just because they sold well is a really bad idea. There’ve been some like that that weren’t up to snuff just out of the gate. It doesn’t mat­ter to us if it’s based on a graphic novel like [Frank Miller’s] 300, or a TV show – if there’s a great uni­verse and story, that’s what’s inter­est­ing to us.”

In the fol­low­ing  Ques­tion and Answer ses­sion Tull stated that Leg­endary and Bliz­zard are work­ing very closely together to get the sto­ry­line per­fect by pin­point­ing what makes up the essence of the War­craft universe:

“I think some of the stuff that makes a game trans­late well into a movie is a good story. If there’s a lore, if there’s a road and story and a world that’s been cre­ated, and char­ac­ters that are inter­est­ing in a way that’s more than just point and shoot. You have to look at it and not make a nov­elty out of it. Not just look at sales records. Bliz­zard plays a very impor­tant role in this process. If you’ve cre­ated a game, be it Halo, Gears Of War, or War­craft [each being trans­formed into a movie] — you came up with some­thing that’s com­pelling enough to res­onate with a huge num­ber of peo­ple. There has to be a trust, and you have to at some point hand over the baton to peo­ple who know how to make films.”

“We are work­ing very closely with the design­ers and writ­ers, and they’re very involved. I think on the big­ger [films] you have to have that. They’re sit­ting right there at the table with us as we develop the story and the script, and I think we’re nail­ing the story and what’s com­pelling about it.”

Via Gama­su­tra where you can find more news from the Hol­ly­wood and Game summit.

At the Res­cue Dawn press event Super­Hero­Hype were there to quiz and talk to Chris­t­ian Bale about The Dark Knight. He had this to say about film­ing the sequel:

“Peo­ple aren’t ques­tion­ing, ‘Are they going to do it or not?’ [Refer­ring to suc­cess of Bat­man fran­chise after the Bat­man and Robin atroc­ity] There’s been an accep­tance of, ‘Yes, these guys know what they’re doing’ and also, because we got so famil­iar with each other… it’s now the third movie that I have made with Chris (Nolan) and Michael Caine. I’ve got­ten to know every­body. We all know how we all work. It’s like my 5th movie with the D.P. It just flies along because there’s no ques­tion in try­ing to sort of work each other out at all. We all know how we like to do it, and there’s a nice short­hand between us all in terms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

And when asked about out-doing Bat­man Begins and the pres­sures of build­ing on such a suc­cess­ful film,

“If we’re just doing the same, then what’s the point? There are peo­ple who should demand that. […] That would be the death knell, wouldn’t it? If we all got com­pla­cent, just said, ‘Oh, we just have to bang out the same thing we did before.’ Sure, we use the strengths, and we’re not going to dis­card the things that worked, but we’ve got to move for­ward as well.”

Super­Hero­Hype are also run­ning a new spoi­lerific report on some film­ing in Chicago.

And for fun, here’s Heath and Bale hav­ing din­ner together:

Sin­ga­porean actor Ng Chin Han, well known in his local arts scene but rel­a­tively unknown else­where, has got his first big break in The Dark Knight, so Chan­nel News Asia reports.

He had this to say about the inter­view process:
“The scripts that they let you read for the audi­tions are not the scripts for the exact film movie because everything’s so top secret. You get scripts that are printed on spe­cial paper that can­not be pho­to­copied, there are invis­i­ble water­marks, all kinds of things. You feel like a spy in a James Bond movie when you are look­ing at these scripts.” 

The char­ac­ter that Ng Chin Han will be play­ing has not been announced.

One par­tic­u­lar video has been doing the rounds as of late, this is the very well FAN pro­duced trailer by the infa­mous WormyT. This means it is FAKE, just to make that clear. The news head­line and Joker footage has been edited painstak­ingly frame by frame.

Another video has also sur­faced over at mul​ti​ply​.com, it looks to have been filmed in a cin­ema and the sound is a lit­tle dodgy. All in all it is likely to be a well for­mat­ted fake.

The Times has an inter­est­ing inter­view with Gary Old­man, it mainly cov­ers the new Harry Pot­ter film but he does offer up some tid­bits about what it’s like to play Jim Gor­don in The Dark Knight:

‘I don’t know how it hap­pened,’ Old­man says of his pigeon­hol­ing as a nat­ural born gang­ster. He speaks slowly. Very slowly. In clipped sen­tences. ‘I really don’t. I was this… psy­cho guy. I just got into these parts. Then it… it… con­t­a­m­i­nates peo­ple. And they think that you’re Crazy-Scary-Gary. The clos­est char­ac­ter to me,’ he adds with pon­der­ous grav­ity, ‘is Jim Gordon.’

[…]

I tell Old­man that the first word that comes to mind when you think of Jim Gor­don is ‘avun­cu­lar’. ‘Yeah,’ he replies with a light shrug. ‘Got a good sense of right and wrong. Fam­ily man. Just a reg­u­lar geezer.’

In other news, Dog Cus­tard have some new Bat­pod shots from the 2007 Licens­ing show here. And a Flickr image has orig­i­nated from Lil­Ron­Gal show­ing the film­ing of a rooftop scene (with a spoi­lerific surprise).

Super­Hero­Hype also has a set report which dis­cusses some scenes that have been filmed, obvi­ously you should beware of spoilers.

Finally, here’s a video show­ing the tum­bler on set, once again, more spoil­ers ahead: YouTube
There’s also another TDK set video from 20th June, of course, there are fur­ther spoilers.

Bliz­zard is hot right now, what with Star­craft 2 on its way and WoW con­tin­u­ing to dom­i­nate. Now we are hear­ing rumors of a Dia­blo adap­ta­tion for the big screen. These rumors came about when “Dia­blo” was spot­ted in the “In Devel­op­ment” sec­tion of Leg­endary Pic­tures’ web­site. This notice has since been removed and Bliz­zard have been char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally silent on the whole mat­ter. Com­ing from an offi­cial source this is hard to clas­sify as merely rumor, though lack of an offi­cial press state­ment and the notice’s removal does war­rant this labelling.

Nobody really knows what’s going on at the moment — except that the War­craft Motion Pic­ture is still in development.

We’ll keep you tuned should any devel­op­ments arise.