Word: ledger
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...Most Popular Costume: The Joker. If Oscar ballots were tallied in San Diego, Heath Ledger's posthumous Best Actor statuette would be a lock. Guys with red lipstick-smeared smiles and purple dinner jackets were as plentiful at Comic-Con this year as those perennials, the Storm Troopers. A few Jokers said their costumes were an homage to Ledger; one confessed it's just more breathable than a Batsuit...
...mind-boggling for us," says Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros. Pictures. (TIME and Warner Bros. are both subsidiaries of Time Warner.) The film benefited from a unique mix of factors beyond the usual superhero movie hype, including a buzzed-about performance by the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, perfectly pitched marketing, agile distribution and gas prices that have made a night at the movies an attractive alternative to a summer road trip. It also helps that The Dark Knight, as most critics and audiences attest, is a very good film...
...early as last summer, months before Ledger's sudden death in January, Warner Bros. sensed that Nolan was filming something that might transcend mere fanboy fodder. With Batman Begins, in 2005, the director successfully rebooted the troubled franchise, but this time around his decision to go darker - and The Dark Knight is as mordant a superhero movie as there has ever been - dovetailed with the popular mood. "We saw the dailies coming in and we knew we had an incredible movie," says Fellman. Though Christian Bale's Batman is The Dark Knight's star, it was Ledger's knife-wielding...
...After Ledger's death, curiosity about his performance - not always driven by the best of impulses - only grew. "It added to a certain mystique about the film," says Steve Mason, box-office analyst at FantasyMoguls.com. While Warner Bros. was anxious about appearing to capitalize on interest in Ledger's death as The Dark Knight's release date approached, it resumed showcasing Ledger in trailers. "The performance is so good, had they not highlighted it, it would have been a mistake," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office analysis firm Media By Numbers. In the end, Fellman says, "[Ledger] certainly...
...Even without its midnight showings, The Dark Knight will play on more screens at more hours than almost any film to date, and box-office returns are projected to be among the biggest of the year. One reason is the Heath Ledger factor. "It's been a very long time since there's been a posthumous performance of an actor that died in an untimely way that promised to be so big and intense and good," says author Mark Harris. "It's a movie with fanboy appeal, but it's also, in an odd way, playing out as a memorial...