dark knight

‘Heath Ledger Exploiter’ Among America’s Hottest New Halloween Costumes

7:30AM STV | While The Dark Knight’s box-office trajectory has leveled out a smidge since becoming the fastest film to $500 million, the marketplace for morbidly exploitive Heath Ledger nostalgia has caught a new wave of holiday momentum. So say the proprietors of something called “Mr. Costumes,” which proudly notes today that varieties of its Joker outfits account for nearly half of its adult costume sales for this Halloween. “The popularity of the movie and the cultural effect of Ledger’s death have propelled seasonal demand for the villain costume,” states a press release recently crapped into our inbox, “while effectively boosting the sales revenues and overall popularity of MrCostumes.com, an emerging player in the Halloween Costumes market.” More »

John Mayer And Josh Brolin Shear Their Locks, But Does A Buzz Cut Always Clean Up A Star’s Image?

10:15AM Molly Friedman | Ah, the buzz cut: that sometimes-risky, sometimes-successful ‘do usually sported by male celebrities when it’s required for a role in a military/secret agent/futuristic film or because they need a quick way to change their public image. But no matter what their reasons are for taking the razor to the scalp, the look has roughly a 50/50 chance of working. Two of the most recent stars to shave it all off are Jennifer Aniston arm candy John Mayer and new member of the Movie Press-Generating Lawbreakers’ Club Josh Brolin, and while Mayer irritatingly manages to pull the look off despite his big head ego, Brolin’s close cut reveals a bit too much skin. Which immediately made us reminisce on buzz cuts of the past, both the bad (Hey, Jude), the good (pre-Scientology Tommy C.), and the very ugly (Attack Of The Killer Umbrella-Bearers):

Batman Nemesis Doubles Average Fanboy Correspondence

9:47AM Defamer Hollywood | In a savvy bit of viral marketing set to reclaim Warner Bros.’ Dark Knight campaign from the near-disaster of votive-and-flower-ready Why So Serious? multiplex displays, Batman fans are encouraged to stopwhatthey’redoingRIGHTNOW and allay their post-Ledger apprehensions at IBelieveinHarveyDent.com. There, Gotham City district attorney Harvey Dent — a/k/a eventual Caped Crusader nemesis Two Face — exhorts visitors to join his campaign to “join the fight for Gotham.” More »

Warner Bros. Left With A Major ‘Dark Knight’ Marketing Problem

7:57AM Seth | And so, with two days to let the devastating news sink in, Variety now asks the inevitable question of what’s to be done with Heath Ledger’s final projects–the wrapped The Dark Knight, and Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Morbidly running through the history of productions faced with surprise cast deaths during shooting (apparently CGI has now taken over for stunt doubles and very low lighting as the re-animating technique of choice), the report then addresses the issue of how such misfortune might cast marketing campaigns in an unpleasant new light. As we pointed out on Tuesday, The Dark Knight’s focuses squarely and gruesomely on Ledger’s chillingly effective performance as The Joker, providing an unwelcome creative predicament for WB’s marketing czar: [WB marketing head Sue] Kroll will likely have to move quickly to rejigger the studio’s current phase of the marketing campaign for “Dark Knight,” focusing on Ledger’s Joker character. This phase of the campaign had been set to run until March. More »

Heath Ledger’s Chilling Final Bow In ‘The Dark Knight’

11:43AM Seth | So how’s The Dark Knight for goodbyes? Give us anything – Brokeback Mountain’s heartache, Candy’s cautionary tale of – gulp – heroin addiction, even Casanova (OK, not Casanova) – but not the The Dark Knight. Not that disfigured creep in the trenchcoat. Heath’s last words to us can’t be a menacingly growled, “It’s all…part of the plan”. His last note, not “Why so serious?” scrawled across a theatrical one-sheet in fingerpainted blood. Warner Bros. has issued this statement in response to his death: More »

Bats

5:30AM Defamer Hollywood | It’s probably too early for Warner Bros. to start rolling out the promotional stunts, but we can think of worse ways to build buzz for Dark Knight than by releasing swarms of actual bats around the city. And even better if they’re bold enough to do it indoors. [Curbed LA] More »