Studio is carefully balancing Ledger

This week, the studio threw a de rigueur Oscar fete at a swank Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills. Chocolate-covered strawberries and plates of fusilli swirled by as stars Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhart and director Christopher Nolan chatted with the crowd of journalists. "I miss Heath," said producer Charles Roven before telling a funny story about Ledger accessorizing his nurse outfit -- one of the Joker's disguises -- with a Harvey Dent campaign sticker he'd gotten from the film's Internet campaign. "He was such a fearless actor."

When the film was released in July, Nolan, various actors and Roven attended special question-and-answer sessions for the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild of America and the Producers Guild of America. The studio is already conducting special academy screenings in regular format and Imax, and has offered to send the academy and guild members their screening copies in Blu-Ray if they prefer.

Still, the topic of Ledger is a sensitive one for Warner Bros., which refused to comment for this article. A publicist for Nolan said that he too would be unavailable.

But working in Ledger's favor is the fact that the academy is familiar with his work, having nominated him for 2005's "Brokeback Mountain."

One of "The Dark Knight's" primary Oscar rivals is "Slumdog Millionaire," a film that Warner Bros. initially bought the domestic rights for. After the conglomerate closed its art-house division Warner Independent Pictures last summer, it opted to split the rights with Fox Searchlight, which is now marketing and distributing the film. The $15-million Hindi-English movie tells the story of a slum kid from Mumbai who improbably ends up on the Indian version of the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." "Slumdog Millionaire" has already begun to sweep the various critics' awards and appears destined for nominations, possibly including one for star Dev Patel, who would be a rival of Ledger in the supporting actor category.

As for "The Dark Knight's" Oscar prospects, rivals tend to be dismissive of Warner Bros.' hopes to turn it into the first Oscar-winning comic-book movie, in part because the demographic makeup of the 5,800-member academy skews older -- not the traditional superhero fan base. Said one, who also declined to be named given the contentiousness of the off-screen jockeying: "Until we wake up one day and we no longer are making any good movies -- dramas -- then the academy will not go this route, unless it's outrageously different . . . . This picture is not so different from the first one. It's still the Batman story. He wears a hat with ears, a cape that can fly."