The Dark Knight Movie

The trailers for "The Dark Knight" have shown quite a bit of Heath Ledger's scabbier, surlier reinvention of the Joker (think of Malcolm McDowell's thug from "A Clockwork Orange" but with kelp-colored hair, scars and a hyena laugh), but the producers have been keeping the film's other Batman bad guy, Two-Face, under wraps. ? "That's right, people don't really know yet," actor Aaron Eckhart said with grin.

Holy opening weekend, Batman! "The Dark Knight," the long-awaited sequel from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, sold $155.3 million in tickets this weekend, according to early estimates from its distributor, setting a record for the biggest three-day take and cementing the primacy of superhero movies at the cineplex. Batman's haul surpassed the bar set last year by Sony Pictures Entertainment's "Spider-Man 3" by $4.

Batman has only begun. Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures' "The Dark Knight," which opened last weekend to a record $158.4 million and piled up big numbers all week, could add on $75 million or more this weekend. "The Dark Knight," produced for about $180 million, has two box-office marks squarely in sight. "Shrek 2" has the record for second-weekend gross, at $72.2 million.

For Warner Bros., the mission was to keep "The Dark Knight" from seeing the light of day. In an era of instantaneous digital copying and widely available high-speed Internet access, the premature and unauthorized release of a movie to the public -- especially a coveted summer blockbuster -- can spell disaster. If the movie's a stinker, the word will travel at the speed of a mouse click, ruining chances of making back money.

The major promotion push behind the DVD release of Warner Bros.' summer blockbuster, "The Dark Knight," appears to have worked -- at least out of the gate. The film, which brought in $530 million in ticket sales in the United States, sold nearly 3 million copies Tuesday, the first day of its DVD release in the U.S., Canada and Britain.

The Hollywood blockbuster "The Dark Knight," which sees Batman venturing to Hong Kong to capture a Chinese criminal, won't be getting an official release in China. Warner Bros. said in a statement Tuesday that it has decided not to release the film in China because of "pre-release conditions" and "cultural sensitivities to some elements of the film." A spokeswoman for the Hollywood studio declined to elaborate. Warner Bros.

Yes, it's ridable. You just have to be a little bit crazy and entirely French to do it. Specifically, you need to be Jean-Pierre Goy, the stunt rider who's spent the last few months jumping Batman's newest batbike at some top-secret location in England to prep for next summer's Bruce Wayne caper, "The Dark Knight," starring Christian Bale as the caped one. Goy is the only person who's ridden the new Batpod -- a bike so outrageous it's hard to believe it was even built.

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- Holy Beltway, Batman! Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) has a part in the next Batman movie. "I don't wear tights," he said. Leahy's scene for "The Dark Knight" was filmed this summer and involves Batman, played by Christian Bale, the Joker, played by Heath Ledger, and Alfred Pennyworth, played by Michael Caine. The longtime Batman fan would reveal little about his role other than that he is called the "distinguished gentleman."

The producers of the new "Batman" movie came under fire for asking tenants along a Hong Kong waterfront to keep their lights on all night for a week to better show off the city's glass and steel skyline. Environmentalists said it was sending the wrong message at a time when the rest of the world was struggling to reduce energy consumption. In a letter sent to tenants and management companies in 60 buildings, October Pictures Ltd.

"The Dark Knight" is one of the most anticipated movies of 2008, and for months Batman fans have been debating the film's biggest wild card: the choice of Heath Ledger as the Joker, a role that comes with the considerable challenge of filling the clown shoes so memorably worn by Jack Nicholson back in 1989.