It’s always fun when a producer is cornered at a junket, forced to fight away frothing journos with just his wits, a chair and possibly a handy whip.
Batman Begins – and Dark Knight – producer Charles Roven was caught in just such a situation this weekend, and gave a little extra detail about the Bat sequel.
"We're really thrilled about Heath Ledger playing The Joker,” he told Superhero hype. “As Chris Nolan has said, the great thing about Heath is he commits himself fully and totally to everything he does. He's just a brilliant, brilliant actor and you know this Joker is a very interesting dark fellow." He refused to be drawn on exactly how, but also added, “One of the things that we have always done - we did it with Batman Begins – is we don't comment on any rumours because it takes all the fun away."
Spoilsport. But he did talk a little bit more about The Dark Knight… "We are hoping, depending upon everyone's schedule and other aspects of what it is they want to do with their careers, that we're going to get most if not all of them who are alive back. Meaning ‘alive in the movie’, not really alive… sorry. We're supposed to get them back if we can. The script is in the process of being written. There isn't a screenplay that exists right now, so I can't really tell you much more than that. Certainly Christian Bale is going to play Batman and Bruce Wayne."
Finally, Roven laid out the schedule for production on the new movie. "We are supposed to start shooting what we call a pre-shoot, which we know what that is, in January and then the main body of the movie is going to start in March.”
“’Alive in the movie’, not really alive”… Yes, we were wondering what had happened to Katie Holmes.