On July 20th, E! will air a True Hollywood Story on Heath Ledger.

The question everyone is asking, and the question that E! is not addressing is: Did they find out if the mysterious “love child” rumor is true?

Aussie newspaper The West Australian tracked down a secret woman who had a brief love affair with a 17-year-old Heath that might have resulted in a secret child.

E! is definitely made a trip to Australia for their show, but was it a fact finding mission?

Guess we’ll have to wait until July.

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Hopefully you weren’t planning to make a full re-creation of The Dark Knight with action figures, because you may have trouble finding a tiny re-creation of The Joker.

/Film reports that the Joker action figure from the upcoming first series of The Dark Knight toy line has flown off of the shelves of toy retailers who didn’t expect this rather grim souvenir to sell as well as it did.

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What’s the best thing about getting Hi-Res trailers as downloads? Going frame-by-frame through some awesome visuals.

Beware the spoilers, boys and girls, there are brief glimpses in the Dark Knight trailer of plot details.

That we will point out and explain BELOW THE CUT!

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Ok, our good friend David Jr has compiled his footage form the crazy Dark Knight Viral that took place on Monday in New York.

Some observations from Dave’s neck of the woods during the scavenger hunt:

1) It was unsupervised until we got to the theater, so it was literally hundreds of people, some in Joker make-up dashing through mid-town to honking cabs and dumbfounded city officials.

2) I saw a kid puking because he ran so much. I caught up with him later in line for the trailer and he told me that he had eaten pate (goose liver or something, right?) on a school trip before playing. What kind of school serves pate?

3) At one point, I was weaving through parked traffic, heading north on 8th avenue and ahead of me was a father pulling his 11 year-old son in between a truck and a taxi. Son: “I don’t think this is safe.”

4) The viral campaign was made for idiots. False info was spread pretty fast in the scramble. The worst one I heard about was a goon who, when asked what was going on by a passerby said: “I’m a bomb specialist. Run,” then took off towards the next clue. For shame.

At the end of the trailer, after abandoning our phones, there was a raffle for a roll of 35mm film. It was described as “maybe what you just saw, maybe not” and was given to a player who obviously didn’t have a 35mm projector back in Queens.

Luckily, someone has threaded the film, and given us our first look at the “Jokerized” trailer: The Dork Knight.

Pretty cool.

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Hello guys.

Boy, is our face red after abandoning you mid-day yesterday to run around the streets of New York with about 200 people counting various architectural oddities in the rain.

This wasn’t our first viral experience (we did some Nine Inch Nails/Year Zero work – also run by 4orty 2wo Entertainment), but it was by far the most chaotic.

And at the end, we got to see this (except projected at an AMC on 42nd St).

UPDATE: Puh-puh-puh-Pulled! But wouldn’t is suck for Warners if you could download it somewhere else? Word on the nets is that the rest of you are going to have to wait until Sunday to see the trailer, which is great, because we have a lot of Cloverfield-like footage of the hunt, the line, the swag and the crazy people who showed up in Midtown, Manhattan in the rain at 5PM on a Monday.

Here is what to notice about the trailer though: this is the first trailer that shows the actual plot of the film. The previous trailers have been great on action and Joker-reveals, but this newest DK trailer is all about the storyline of the film. Dawes dating Dent, Bruce having to become more vicious to fight the Joker, Joker and the crime bosses, it’s all there.

And we’re psyched.

Be back with a brief report soon, and probably video report sometime this week.

See you NY Clowns soon!

CLICK (quietly so no one notices)

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Our earlier report about a shot of The Joker feigning death in a body bag being cut from The Dark Knight seems to be almost 100% not true.

There is another nameless source who speaks with a voice just as powerful as the original nameless source and says: “I know for a fact that that scene is in the film. I also know that WB has made no such mandate and that Chris is honest when saying that he will not change what was intended with The Joker.”

So, good news, maybe.

Still no word on if these under-the-radar Dark Knight screenings are really going on.

Thanks to Rez, who has been really helpful with tips today, especially since we’re not feeling so awesome.

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This from CinemaBlend who claim to have a man inside the post-production on The Dark Knight:

According to our very own caped crusader there have been recent secret screening of The Dark Knight going on in various locations around the country. This may be of no surprise a couple of months short of release, however, what is of interest and concern is a scene the scooper talks of, which due to the tragic death of Heath Ledger, may never see the light of day because of reactions in many of the screenings.

The scene involves Ledger’s Joker character pretending to be dead and being pictured in a body bag. Apparently the aftershocks of Ledger’s unfortunate death are such that many in the screening reacted rather badly to this moment and now execs are considering excising the scene altogether.

We’re torn as to if this is a good idea or not. On one hand, the film is a film as it stands right now, and if film doesn’t let us transcend real life then it doesn’t work as a movie.

On the other hand, if there are real test audiences who are reacting badly, one establishing shot of a dead-looking Joker can probably be tossed without sacrificing the plot point, and if there’s one thing that is noticeable about The Dark Knight from the press, it’s that the film is already pretty dark.

This isn’t studio execs cutting out a sequence, from what we understand, it’s a shot. It’s the World Trade Center getting cut out of Spider-Man promotions.

However, this reports is slightly suspect because we haven’t heard from or even of anyone who has seen The Dark Knight. Especially for a hot property that is still running a full Alternate Reality Game online, it seems like news that these “secret screenings” were occurring would at least make a tiny rumble on the landscape.

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The category is: Thing a rich actor’s family argues about after his untimely death. Contestant number one?

“Money.”

Show me the money? Ding! Ding! Ding!

Heath Ledger’s family is a-fussin’ and a-fuedin’ over Heath’s father’s management of Heath’s estate. Ledger’s will was old and therefore, all his assets went to his family, not his ex-partner Michelle Williams and their daughter Matilda.

The Ledger family gracefully accepted the money, telling the media that Michelle and Matilda “will be taken care of,” and managed not to add: “But seriously, when is Michelle going to be in better movies? Man can’t support his family on Batman money alone.”

Now Heath’s father, Kim Ledger, has some brothers speaking out to the celebrity media, claiming that Kim plunged their grandfather’s estate into deep debt in Australia.

Mike Ledger, the pissy Uncle, is suggesting that the family re-arrange the Ledger estate and take it out of Kim’s hands.

“Our only vested interest is to assure that Matilda is well looked after…When you are talking about large sums of money like this,” he says, “it should be an independent executor, but Kim hasn’t chosen that way.”

This just brings to mind the sordid history of Dave’s family, who used to be filthy rich with the patent on one of the early models of the washing machine.

Sadly, greedy relatives sold that off, leaving Dave a penniless writer, forced to write in the first person plural, even on days when he is horribly poor and alone.

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This is one of those rumblings that people are going to take seriously because news really sucks today. Although the New Zealand Herald is, we’re sure, a fine news source; this is the kind of thing you usually hear from Variety or a publicist.

Then again, maybe the Kiwis get information we don’t. That’s always possible.

Johnny Depp is holding open auditions to find screenwriters for his latest movie.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star will play surrealist painter Salvador Dali in new film Dali and is keen to get the right script, regardless of who it comes from.

A source said: “He’s open to working with anyone - from housewives to pensioners - if the script is right.”

Depp is not the only Hollywood star set to portray the eccentric artist on the big screen.

Al Pacino and Peter O’Toole are being lined up to star in rival movies, Dali and I and Goodbye Dali respectively.

Asked why so many films were being made 18 years after the artist’s death, Peter Rawley, producer of Dali, said: “Film-makers somehow pick up on the vibe. But three films is nothing, at one stage, we counted up to nine.”

Dali was quite the character, and not to bash Pacino or O’Toole, but both of those actors haven’t shown the range in the past couple years that Johnny Depp has.

Currently, Depp is off shooting the Heath Ledger fill-ins for Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and has joked about getting involved with Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland.

Otherwise, his production calendar isn’t as full as it used to be back in the old days where his calendar was little more than “Pirate movie” scrawled across entire months in black Sharpie.

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How about that?

Earlier today we talked about the success of the online viral campaign for Warners’ The Dark Knight.

Previous to the death of Heath Ledger, The Joker was the main prankster behind the viral ads. At various given times, the Joker sent the players on a nation-wide scavenger hunt, assembled hundreds dressed like the Joker for a live game that eventually ended with the players finding a fake Joker corpse (fake both in life and in the storyline).

Now, Warners has been talking up the second phase of the Dark Knight ad campaign, featuring Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face. It looks like the campaign begins today.

On one of the viral sites, IBelieveInHarveyDent.com, a fake site for Gotham Politician Harvey Dent (who becomes Two-Face after the Joker splashes him with acid) is now asking for e-mails and phone numbers from fans for what has to be the newest viral campaign.

We’re guessing that before this is over, we’ll get a real pretty image of Two-Face.

We suggest you sign up.

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This story from A Current Affair basically covers all the corners of this Heath Ledger video story.

Turns out Heath was obsessed with Nick Drake, who also happened to OD on prescription medication leading news outlets to make the connection in order to fill another 15 minutes with Heath Ledger news.

There are a lot of depressed Nick Drake fans, like Elliott Smith who spawned a whole other group of depressed fans.

Just because this depressed fan was famous and died doesn’t mean we should start looking for ghosts in a room obviously filled with newscasters wearing white sheets.

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Every once in awhile, we call something much earlier than everyone else. When that happens, we’d like to let you know about it, in case you’ve begun to doubt our badassery.

For instance, we told you that Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell were stepping in to take Heath Ledger’s part in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus a full 3 days before Variety picked up on it.

Also, we mentioned that HD-DVD might as well be dead that same day, and now there are very steady, but very loud rumors that Toshiba, the makers of HD-DVD are going to discontinue their HD-DVD player product lines.

Yup, it’s over.

Now, both Sony (Blu-Ray backers) and Toshiba can focus on driving the quality of Blu-Ray discs up and the prices of Blu-Ray equipment down.

We don’t even have a HD Television, so our trusty old disc player will stay firmly mounted atop our VHS player and self-created LaserDisc/BETA hybrid player.

Just because a format loses out doesn’t mean they’re going to replace our Voyage of the Mimi LaserDiscs.

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Quick recap for those of you not following the ongoing drama of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, the film Heath Ledger was working on when he died.

The film went into some sort of insurance limbo while the population en masse decided to mourn Heath. Then, everyone was head-faked by The Dark Knight and Terry Gilliam’s fantasy film is sneaking onward.

Imaginarium’s story is about an ancient traveling show that arrives in modern London with a magic mirror that can transport its audience into fantastical realms of the imagination. Christopher Plummer plays the impresario Dr. Parnassus, and Ledger took the role of a mysterious outsider who joins the troupe on a quest through parallel worlds to save the doctor’s daughter (Lily Cole) from the clutches of the devil (Tom Waits).

Because the film is so heavy on fantasy, Ledger is going to be replaced by multiple actors as his character shifts forms. Or that’s what we’re assuming, ‘cause every geek can name several shape-shifting magics off the top of their head (gypsy machine, make me Big!), so we’re unclear on the details of the transformation.

The good thing is that the “why” and “how” aren’t going to matter, it’s all about the “who” as AICN reports exclusively that Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell will step in to take over Heath’s role.

Whoever this “mysterious outsider” character is, he just became the Janus of A-List Hollywood.

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What you see above is half of a teaser picture of the titular Imaginarium from The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Terry Gilliam’s newest fantasy and the film that is dealing with it’s cast member Heath Ledger’s premature death.

Only half the Imaginarium has been revealed on Quickstop Entertainment because it’s a teaser for the full picture of the Imaginarium that will debut on the official website this weekend.

The server on the site went down after Heath’s accidental overdose, but the whole web project is getting an upgrade and they are teasing it a mere two days in advance.

Does The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus really need more press after the events of the last two weeks? And do we really care with an “imaginarium” looks like?

The film sounds cool and all, but a marketing push when: a) your PR from the death of one of your cast members is still fresh and b) when you aren’t sure how you are going to make the rest of your film, raises some red flags.

The Imaginarium is still fully funded, right?

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