I was supposed to get a crack at Michael Caine at noon today, but I was delayed by breaking news on The Wrestler. I wound up interviewing Is There Anybody There? director John Crowley, who was in no position to give me any dish on the next Batman sequel. Here's Slashfilm on Caine's report that Johnny Depp will play The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman The Penguin in the next Batman sequel. I'm sure it's a much-discussed casting fantasy, but I doubt Warners even has a script yet!

Clearly, Warner Bros. is abandoning the idea of sending Superman into a movie with other superheroes, like a Superman/Batman movie or Justice League, because as Warner prexy Jeff Robinov admits in this long interview with The Wall Street Journal about his studio's future strategy, right now Warners doesn't know who Superman is. Wanted: a new model Superman.

Figuring out how the iconic DC comic character will proceed is front and center for the studio, which was not entirely happy with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns. Neither were many fans, who objected to the love triangle with a married Lois Lane, as well as her child, fathered by Superman. They also want a mightier and more formidable villain than Lex Luthor, played by Kevin Spacey. Director Bryan Singer, who is currently attached to what was to be a Superman Returns sequel, had promised fanns at Comic-Con to go "Wrath of Khan" on it. If Singer, who has been preoccupied with his upcoming World War II Tom Cruise movie, Valkyrie, can't find a "reboot" that meets Warners' expectations, they'll move on.

Clearly, the fans care deeply about this superhero. Comments flood in whenever we touch on the subject. There's life in the venerable comic book character yet, if Warners can crack this challenge.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
In a front page story in this Sunday’s Weekly Variety, Marc Graser explores Warner Bros.’ plans to get its classic DC characters onto the bigscreen. Or rather, its plans to make plans.

Batman is soaring, but the future of Superman on film is uncertain. The Justice League movie has been pushed back and it’s hard to imagine this Batman team being too enthusiastic about seeing their gritty, realistic take on the character alongside Superman and Wonder Woman. Greg Berlanti’s Green Lantern script has been well-received at the studio, but not yet greenlit.

Meanwhile, rival Marvel has launched its own studio, had a smash with Iron Man and a successful reboot of The Incredible Hulk, and announced four more pictures, introducing film versions of at least two more of their star characters, Thor and Captain America.

This begs the question: Why has Marvel been able to move so decisively to put its properties on film while Warner Bros seems to be stuck in a perpetual ponder? The answers are sometimes paradoxical.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]
Entertainment Weekly is making no secret of their unhappiness with corporate cousin Warner Bros. for letting them put Harry Potter on the Fall Preview cover and then moving the film to July '09.

"EW and Warner Bros. share a parent company, but they clearly do not share, you know, important friggin’ information," blogs Jeff Giles.

But that works both ways.

Earlier this summer, when I set out to write my preview article on The Dark Knight, Warner publicists put one condition on the interviews: No one would talk about the death of Heath Ledger. Since that angle didn't interest me, I readily agreed. There seemed to be jitters in Burbank that the story would seem ghoulish and scare people away.

Then the EW cover story on The Dark Knight came out all about, you guessed it, Heath Ledger's death. So I call the Warner publicists to complain that they were just trying to feed their corporate cousin an exclusive. But they were as unhappy about that cover story as EW is about Warner moving Harry Potter, and in fact said basically the same thing Giles said: Warner is Warner, EW is EW, EW does what it does like any other media outlet. They insisted that they hadn't signed off on or collaborated with EW on the Heath-Ledger-is-dead TDK cover story, and that EW had assembled the story from snippets of interviews conducted under other pretenses.

The bright side, I guess, is that this proves EW has some editorial independence.

Christian Bale can rest easy and enjoy the success of The Dark Knight. British prosecutors say that Bale will not face charges from an alleged assault filed by his family after strong words broke out in the Dorchester Hotel on July 20, on the eve of the movie's premiere in London.

“Management’s biggest challenge is transitioning into this brave new world without trampling the massive revenue streams that have supported our businesses for so long."

Ain't it the truth. Warner Bros. chairman Barry Meyer states the obvious in a fascinating NYT piece that uses Jeffrey Bewkes' rebooting of the Time Warner empire as a window (no pun intended) into the challenges facing the entertainment business at large. Will Bewkes be able to gain a network by acquiring NBC Universal? Will increased profit margins on VOD save the corporation from declining DVD fortunes? And while The Dark Knight reigns supreme this summer, will putting more focus on the Warners studio yield consistent profits?

[Photo courtesy NYTimes]

[Posted by David S. Cohen]

With all the carping over Batman’s voice in “The Dark Knight” (my colleague Peter Debruge calls it the “butch voice”) I would like to point out for the record: As any self-respecting Batman nerd (I plead guilty) knows from devouring the hardcover about-Batman’s-toys book that came out with “Batman Begins,” there is an explanation for the voice. They just haven’t put it in the movies yet.

So in the spirit of public service, I have written the missing scene fragment.

(Posted by David S. Cohen)

Another random thought sparked by Andrew Klavan’s op-ed piece in the WSJ arguing that the “Dark Knight” filmmakers are secret conservatives who must mask their true opinions by putting them into a comicbook movie.

If we extrapolate from the movie to real life, since Batman gives control of his let's-spy-on-everyone-in-Gotham's-cellphones technology to Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who doesn’t approve of it and believes it’s too much power for one man to have, the Nolans et al must believe that the one person who ought to have control of the government’s real-life warrantless wiretapping system is…. senator Russ Feingold?

I tried to think of someone in show business whom I'd trust with that power. My wife suggested… Morgan Freeman. But I’m not so sure. True, he’s Hollywood's go-to guy for kindly authority figures: God, the President, the head of the Fraternity of Assassins. (Okay, not always so kindly.) But I’ve interviewed him on a couple of junkets and I think there’s just a touch of the rogue about Mr. Freeman. It’s part of his charm. But I can’t help but wonder if, given that power, he just might have a little bit too much fun...

Meanwhile, outside Comic-Con, a Wall Street Journal editorial claims that The Dark Knight is actually a clever way of praising the presidency of George W. Bush. One Variety editor says the writer may not know how right he is.

[Posted by David S. Cohen]

Is George W. Bush the Dark Knight?

That’s what mystery writer Andrew Klavan argues in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He opines that The Dark Knight filmmakers are secret conservatives who must mask their real opinions by putting them in a comicbook movie.

But let’s unpack this a bit. One of the surreal aspects of the post-9/11 world is how much Osama bin Laden resembles a comicbook villain, complete with exotic costume and a fondness for monologues. In a Batman comic, he might have been The Sheik — and in the self-righteous pose he strikes as he plots the destruction of the United States, he is a cousin to R’as al Ghul, the villain Liam Neeson portrays in Batman Begins.

Al Ghul isn’t just a villain, though. He’s also Bruce Wayne’s mentor, the man who teaches him the courage and skills he uses to become the Batman. In fact, al Ghul calls him “my greatest student” and serves as a dark father figure for Bruce Wayne, who seems to be working out all kinds of father-son issues throughout the film.

In Batman Begins, Gotham is plagued with crime and corruption; Batman attacks the mob and saves the city from the Scarecrow and al Ghul’s WMD attack. Yet once Batman shows up, the Joker’s nihilistic terrorism is unleashed. The film ends with Lt. Jim Gordon warning Batman about escalation — that he’s inspiring not only the good people of Gotham, but also the criminals. This suggests Batman called the Joker into existence.

If Batman is George W., should we then conclude that the Batman Begins filmmakers think Bush’s methods inspired the Al-Qaeda and bin Laden? That’s more in line with anti-Bush arguments, including many made by Democrats over the years.

I don’t know anything about the politics of Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan or David Goyer. But I think Klavan misses the point when he writes:

“The moment filmmakers take on the problem of Islamic terrorism in realistic films… The good guys become indistinguishable from the bad guys, and we end up denigrating the very heroes who defend us. Why should this be?

“The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of The Dark Knight itself: Doing what's right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.”

This brings to mind one of the most unsettling scenes in The Dark Knight, in which Batman beats up the Joker in the police interview room as the police look on, hoping to force him to reveal what he’s done with good guys Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes.

My first reaction to the scene, which has been endlessly reproduced in publicity photos, was that it was a huge visual blunder. Batman looks cool and sinister at night, in the shadows; in the harsh light of the interview room, he looks ridiculous.

But then I thought more about the scene. As Batman confronts the Joker, the film cuts away to the police, the normal people, watching them from the other side of the one-way mirror — just as we, the audience, are watching Batman and the Joker through the movie screen.

This is also the scene in which the Joker taunts Batman: “What would I do without you? You complete me,” and warns, “To them, you’re just a freak. Like me.” Those words may come from the mouth of the villain, but the filmmaking suggests the Joker has, like a Shakespearean fool on PCP, hit on a harsh truth: Batman has more in common with his killer-clown foe than with the normal people he means to protect.

So should we conclude The Dark Knight argues that Bush and bin Laden are two sides of the same coin? If so, the Nolans actually come down somewhere to the left of Michael Moore.

In fairness to Goyer and the Nolans, I also think that The Dark Knight is the Act II of a three-act play. It’s a helluva second act, but I sure hope that in Act III they’re going to take a clearer point of view, rather than just asking provocative questions.

Holy batshit! Shades of Russell Crowe are haunting Dark Knight star Christian Bale, who got into something in advance of the record opening of the second Christopher Nolan Batman installment that caused his mother and sister to file assault allegations. Wow. We don't yet know what went on here.

How bad can it be to star in what could be the biggest movie of the year? Bad timing indeed.

It's a strange high-low time, as industry folks batten down the hatches in the face of tighter credit and an unresolved de facto SAG strike. There's unemployment, fewer movies being made, agency attrition, layoffs across many companies, and yet the summer b.o. is going strong, and breaking records.

Despite its grim take on the world and two and a half hour running time, The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's follow-up to Batman Begins, broke b.o. records: its estimated $155 million gross was the best three-day opening ever, beating Spider-Man 3's $151 million in 2007. (It scored 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, narrowly beating Iron Man's 93%.) Another funny thing happened at the summer boxoffice: movies that nabbed good reviews lasted longer in theaters than the ones that got creamed. There is hope for us yet.

The Top Ten boxoffice cumes to date this summer, with Rotten Tomatoes scores, are:

1. Iron Man $314.4M 93%

2 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull $312.5M 76%

3. Kung Fu Panda $206.5M 88%

4. Hancock $191.5M 38%

5. Wall-E $182.5M 96%

6. Dark Knight $155.3M 94%

7. Sex and the City: The Movie $149.8M 51%

8. Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian $139.3M 66%

9. Incredible Hulk $131.7M 67%

10. Wanted $123.3M 73%

Clearly, Hancock, starring fluke zone star Will Smith, is the 2008 exception that proves the rule.

Meanwhile women and Abba fans gave the musical Mamma Mia! a respectable $27.6 million opening estimate. Thanks to strong holdover business from Journey to the Center of the Earth, Wall-E and others, the weekend broke the record for a non-holiday gross with a total $250 million. Hellboy took a hit from direct fanboy competitor Dark Knight, declining 71%.

Here are weekend b.o. reports from Variety and Fantasy Moguls, which argues the case for a best picture Oscar for The Dark Knight:

Everyone seems to lament the ever-eroding ratings for Hollywood's biggest night. They blame the host and the length of acceptance speeches, but the real reason, in my opinion, is the obscurity of some of the selections. One role of the Oscars is certainly to champion smaller films, but the awards should also recognize the year's best popular entertainment. The Dark Knight and Wall-E are both Oscar caliber movies in my mind. Last year, there should have been a Best Picture slot for The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal). If the industry wants a return to its rating glory, voters should not narrow their list of nominees exclusively to small, well-reviewed art films.

I suspect The Dark Knight will wind up with many Oscar nominations, mainly in the technical categories, as well as Heath Ledger's supporting actor slot. Best picture? I don't know about that. As for Pixar's lauded Wall-E, here's why the animated film will find tough sledding en route to a best picture Oscar.

I'm not going out on a limb to say that the most anticipated presentation at Comic-Con will be Zack Snyder's panel on Warner Bros.' The Watchmen. Remember, 300 exploded out of Comic-Con two years ago.

The trailer hit the Web this week, and the HD version is stunning. I love trailers where you don't know what the hell is going on. Of course afficionados of the Alan Moore comics can identify the origin story of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) and the shadowy bipolar Rorshact Rorschach, among others.

Snyder himself explains some of his secrets here. UPDATE: And here's EW's Snyder and Alan Moore interviews. And Comic-Con preview. Stay tuned to Variety's ongoing Comic-Con coverage.

Today I talked to someone who has seen the movie, Legendary Pictures producer Thomas Tull, who goes 50/50 with Warner Bros. on such films as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Superman Returns, 300 and The Lady in the Water (the only film he didn't actually produce). An old Watchmen comics fan, Tull wanted in on the film as soon as Snyder pitched it, even though many people have regarded the complex, layered sci-fi narrative about superheroes who are real as unfilmable. After Tull saw a cut of the movie he told Snyder, "You got it. You nailed it the spirit of it and made it come alive."

"It's a smart visually stunning movie," he told me. Of course he's vested.

He's also vested in making the next Superman installment, which is still years away, come to life. While Bryan Singer has been working on Valkyrie, Tull and the folks at Warners have been listening to various screenwriters pitch their solutions to how to make the next Superman work. "It's an iconic character," says Tull. "After everything that went into the first film, it's important to make sure that nothing is rushed and we come out with a fantastic second film." One thing they all agree on: Superman needs a powerful antagonist, a "worthy opponent," he says.

Coming sooner is Louis Leterrier's follow-up to Incredible Hulk, Clash of the Titans. And no, Leterrier is not being talked about to direct Superman. "He's laser-focused on Titans," says Tull.

When Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight opens Friday, it will be huge. $130 million huge? That's a high figure for a two-and-a-half hour movie.

And many of those ticket sales are being made in advance. MovieTickets.com, for example, reports that over 700 performances of Dark Knight are already sold out in North America, including over 270 performances in Los Angeles and New York City. The Dark Knight is outselling three of the online ticket seller's top-performing films of all-time at the same point in the sales cycle, including Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Spider-Man 3 and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Over at online rival Fandango.com, over 500 showtimes of The Dark Knight are already sold out.

MovieTickets.com’s Top-10 Performing Films of All-Time
1. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

2. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

3. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

4. The Passion of The Christ

5. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

6. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

7. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

8. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

9. Matrix Reloaded

10. Spider-Man 3

Fandango's weekend ticket sales (as of 7/15/08 2:00 p.m. PT) :

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

The Dark Knight “Go” 90%

Mamma Mia! “Go” 3%

Hellboy II: The Golden Army “Go” 2%

Journey to the Center of the Earth “Go” 2%

Wall-E “Go” 1%

A key story of summer 2008 is the rise of Marvel Entertainment. Now in charge of its own destiny with Iron Man and Incredible Hulk, the company is actively developing its own characters for movies down the line. And execs are willing to defend Marvel's long-term interests, whether that means negotiating tough with Jon Favreau on directing the Iron Man sequel or telling Edward Norton that some of his favorite scenes in Incredible Hulk will have to wait for the DVD.

At the Hellboy II premiere, Favreau told me he that while he was planning to do Iron Man 2 and wanted to do The Avengers as well, Marvel was unlikely to wait for him to do both. The "official" announcement will likely wait for Comic-Con.

Now execs at DC Comics are taking note. Long more passive in their relationship to their films, there are signs of change, reports David Cohen. Still up in the air are such DC projects as the next Batman and Superman movies (how about those Louis Leterrier rumors?) and Justice League, not to mention the long-in-the-works Wonder Woman.

Time's Richard Corliss loves the latest Chris Nolan Batman.

In its rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted. He knows what he is: an "agent of chaos." Your worst nightmare.

A screenplay has leaked on the Internet, of a recently unearthed Dark Knight script by writer-director Michael Bay. (It's a send-up.) Warners clearly opted to go another way.

Finally, I would have preferred to see The Dark Knight in 35 mm, not IMAX. (I will go see it again when it opens July 18.) While the sequences that were shot with giant cameras were stunning at the IMAX venue--especially the deep detailed helicopter shots over Gotham and the amazing car/truck chase filmed in Chicago's freeway tunnels--I found the movie overwhelming. My brain starts to shut down when it gets over-pixillated, and this film goes on for two and a half hours. (Here's Justin Chang's review.)

My instincts told me when I first saw The Dark Knight trailer: Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins follow-up would fall into the trap of the summer tentpole sequel. It's not entirely his fault. The studio gives him his marching orders: top the last one. Make it bigger, better, bolder, more FX, more action, more scale and scope and characters (read toys). What else should a poor boy to do with $180 million?

Nolan delivered on the first Batman reboot and he does it again here. The Dark Knight will work at the boxoffice and keep the franchise alive.

In many ways, this movie functions as a western, with an honorable sheriff (Gary Oldman's lovable police detective Gordon), a nasty outlaw (Heath Ledger's extraordinary, anarchistic Joker), a lone gunman hero operating outside the law (Christian Bale's Batman) with loyal veteran sidekick (Michael Caine as Alfred), and the lovely lass that the outsider cannot have (Rachel Dawes, the delightful and wily Maggie Gyllenhaal).

And then--here's where the movie starts to go off the tracks--we have Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, the too-virtuous-to-be-true D.A. who is in love with Gyllenhaal, thus forming a love triangle, as well as another Batman accomplice, inventor Lucius Fox (read James Bond's Q), played by the over-exposed Morgan Freeman. Then add a bunch of mafia guys led by deliciously wicked Eric Roberts.

Somehow, David S. Goyer (who wrote the story), and screenwriter Nolan brothers Chris and Jonathan manage to play out all these plot strands. But they wind up with a half-hour finale on top of the two hour main movie, which is really about Batman vs. Joker, who wind up in an iconic face-off on a main street in Gotham. (Ledger dominates Dark Knight news coverage, natch. The LAT addresses the movie from that angle, while EW goes way overboard. Clearly, Warners is making an Oscar push for the film. Ledger's acting nomination is inevitable; while James Dean and others have been nominated after their deaths, only Network's Peter Finch has won a posthumous Oscar.)

Oddly, because The Dark Knight is busy servicing all these other characters, the movie doesn't spend enough time with its leading man, Bruce Wayne/Batman (BTW, Batman's basso-growly voice is silly).

After twists and turns aplenty, some more satisfying than others, the movie comes to a gratifying conclusion (setting up the next sequel). But while Eckhart is winning as Dent, his character detour as Two-Face does not pay off.

I suspect that the filmmakers should have figured out the shorter version of this movie before they shot it, not after, because by then they couldn't cut it, according to Nolan (the full Q & A from one of my Guild spies is on the jump). Nolan shot The Prestige before he came back to work on the final drafts of the script. And by then he was locked into studio-mandated start and delivery and release dates.

My fantasy of the ideal version of this movie doesn't matter a whit, because it will play. The complexities of the plot are more fun to talk about than anything since Wall-E or Iron Man, and that makes Dark Knight one of the best movies of the summer. Maybe some dark over-nourishment is better than a simpler, structurally perfect masterpiece, after all.

The folks at Wired have posted a nice juicy Dark Knight production story/Chris Nolan interview. I'm working on seeing the movie--there's an L.A. junket this weekend--where they will be screening the pic in IMAX for folks who are doing interviews at the junket. I tend to stay away from junkets, roundtables etc. But I want in!

UPDATE: They're overbooked for the screening, actually turning people who thought they were coming away. The IMAX rooms are smaller than usual, it seems. :-(

They'll let us into their trade screening next week, they say. And meanwhile Rolling Stone has what Richard Roeper would call an "early review." It's a rave.

Here are some of the high points of the Che press conference Thursday:

"The process of editing was intense," said director Steven Soderbergh. "The further you get into it, you need context. That's why you need two movies."

Soderbergh visited Cuba five times but never met Che Guevara cohort Fidel Castro: "I was told, 'Pedro may call you.' He has a reputation for calling at 2 am and saying 'Come over. Let's talk.' I also heard that he likes to stop the film and talk about it when it moves him to. This film he may not survive."

Soderbergh admired Water Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the young Ernesto Guevara: "Walter's movie is really an Act One. With these, now it's a trilogy."

He defended his film's friendly approach to the iconic and polarizing revolutionary: "I've read the anti-Che literature out there. I get the arguments. I feel there's no amount of barbarity I could put on the screen that would satisfy them."

The shoot was rough and tumble:

"On the set I told the actors that I'm not going to be able to take care of you. I'm just trying to get this movie shot on schedule. And they formed a support group to survive it.

It sounds like he wants to use Smello-vision: "I wish we could transit the smell to the screen. There was a smell on the set."

[Photo of press conference by Jeffrey Wells]

Two playboy superheroes with sidekicks and gadgets and comics fans are duking it out at the summer b.o.: DC's Batman and Marvel's Iron Man. Watch the two action heroes take each other on: