The nominations for the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild have been announced, with Heath Ledger in the running for best male actor in a supporting role. The ceremony will take place on Sunday, Jan 25th, with a simulcast Live on TNT and TBS at 8 PM ET/PT.

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
JOSH BROLIN / Dan White – “MILK” (Focus Features)
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. / Kirk Lazarus – “TROPIC THUNDER” (Paramount Pictures)
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN / Father Brendan Flynn – “DOUBT” (Miramax Films)
HEATH LEDGER / Joker – “THE DARK KNIGHT” (Warner Bros. Pictures)
DEV PATEL / Older Jamal – “SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture
THE DARK KNIGHT (Warner Bros. Pictures)
HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY (Universal Pictures)
INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (Paramount Pictures)
IRON MAN (Paramount Pictures)
WANTED (Universal Pictures)

Seems like the tabloids are at it again, this time with rumors that Rachel Weisz will be playing Cat Woman, Shia LaBoeuf to play Robin and Eddie Murphy as The Riddler – where do they get this crap? Suffice to say, it’s all made up drivel.

Time to get some real voices on the sequel to The Dark Knight; Alan Horn, president of Warner Bros. has recently spoken with Collider:

We’ve been talking to Chris Nolan and what we have to do is get him in the right place and have him tell us what he thinks the notion might be for a great story, but Chris did a great job and we’d love to have him come back and do another one.”

As far as the timing of the project, he went onto say: “The story is everything and we are very respectful of Chris. We have a wonderful relationship with him and we are going to be respectful of his timing and we want to get it right. Also, I think the fans expect that – they want us to make a terrific movie – we have to give them another great movie.“

The American Film Institute has listed its top movies of 2008, and The Dark Knight is listed in it along with some prestigious company:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Frozen River
Gran Torino
Iron Man
Milk
WALL-E
Wendy and Lucy
The Wrestler

Can’t say we didn’t see this one coming. Nikki Finke has the scoop on the sales numbers,

I just heard that Warner Bros’ Batman Blu-ray discs alone sold 600,000 copies on Tuesday, the first day of release. By contrast, Marvel/Paramount’s Iron Man sold 250,000 Blu-ray discs when it premiered on September 30th and ended up selling 400,000 Blu-ray units in its first week. But wait til you see what The Dark Knight sold in both formats, standard def and hi-def: 3 million copies bought by customers in the U.S., Canada and the UK on its first day in stores. That’s 3x the norm.

Reuters have the latest update on the DVD and Blu-ray sales, stating that more than 10 million units have been shifted:

Sales of the DVD, starring Christian Bale as Batman and the late Heath Ledger as the villainous Joker, totaled more than 10 million units worldwide since its December 9 release and are expected to remain strong throughout the holiday season, Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros movie studio said. Ten million units translate into an estimated $175 million in revenues, according to Home Media Magazine Market Research.

The best selling DVD of all time is “Finding Nemo” with over 60m units sold.

In a turnaround it appears that the James Newton Howard/Hans Zimmer soundtrack is once again eligible for an Academy Award nomination. It had previously been ruled out (Nov 10th) because 5 composers were named on the cue sheet; which was deemed to be too many. In response the ‘affected parties’ submitted information to the contrary, leading The Music Branch Executive Committee to conclude that Zimmer and Howard had authorship of the score, putting the music back in contention for an Oscar.

Source: Variety

The nominations for the golden globes were announced today, and as usual are being measured as a pre-cursor to the possible nominations for the Oscars.

Heath Ledger has picked up a nomination for the best supporting actor for his role as the joker, a very strong indication that he may be in the running for the same honor at the upcoming academy awards.

More shortly as I am posting this from a moving train on an iPhone.

The exclusive Dark Knight Blu-ray and DVD packages are coming in many many different flavors; some with free Batman mask (see Target), some with a Joker or Batman mask statuette (see Best Buy), some with a miniature Bat pod (see Amazon) and some in a steel case. All of them can be grabbed from Ebay, for the obsessive collector in you.

Amazon

Dark Knight Blu-ray | DVD | Special Edition Blu-ray with Bat-pod

(See our original Dark Knight DVD and Blu ray post for details)

Exclusives on Ebay

Target

Best Buy

Christopher Nolan has been speaking with USA Today about the success of The Dark Knight and its potential sequel:

Nolan says he is jotting notes and doing some rough outlines for a third story, but he hasn’t yet found anything he’s willing to commit to film, despite Warner Bros.’ eagerness to get a new film underway.

“It was obvious when the box office was so big ($530 million domestically) that we had underestimated how ready fans were to reboot the franchise,” he says. “The worst thing you could do now that you’ve gotten the plane back in the air is mess up the landing.”

[Talking about sequels and a third movie] “I don’t know why they’re hard to do,” Nolan says. “Maybe there’s so much expectation to them. But I wouldn’t want to do one if it weren’t going to be as good as the first or second. That’s not respectful to the fans.”

Nolan also points out his reasons for not putting outtakes or deleted scenes on the DVD – not a single extra scene involving The Joker:

Nolan says he wasn’t keeping deleted scenes from fans. “For my past three films, I really haven’t had scenes that didn’t make it in the movie,” he says. “If it’s in the final script, I tend put it on screen.”

Any outtakes, however, were intentionally left off the DVD. “I don’t like outtakes or gag reels,” Nolan says. “I don’t think it’s respectful to the actors, who signed on to have their performance on screen, not the takes that didn’t work out. It discourages actors from going all-out if they think every mistake is going on the disc.”