Star Wars and Clone Wars.

Folded:

• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (zip-line! The train! The mountains! Holy crap!)
• Batman bike leathers (these are either too cool for school or too sad for words. Not sure yet)
• A ‘state of the art film centre for London’s South Bank’ (so we can’t really afford £45 million quid at the moment, but what else is new?)
• The kid in THIS PRAM (…will have the best story to tell when he gets older. Pity he won’t remember any of it)
• Awkwardfamilyphotos.com (very funny, so long as you don’t see yourself on there)

Creased:

• Life after Uncharted 2 (too upsetting to think about. Alcoholism maybe?)
• The Twilight Saga: New Moon (is anyone over sixteen actually excited about this?)
• JD’s Don Johnson stubble on Scrubs (possibly he’s shaved it off by now. Still though, very late eighties)
• Leave it to Lamas (can you believe this guy was in Grease?! Scrap that, he was Renegade!)
• Lindsay Lohan (what has she done to herself now?)

It’s Cher who we feel most sorry for, of course. We thought that Cher had the Batman 3 Catwoman role all sewn up.

But, no, Megan Fox had to waltz in and snatch it from her. Damn you, Megan Fox. What’s your Catwoman going to like, huh? All young and sexy, probably. Well that’s not good enough – we wanted Batman 3 to feature a doddery 63-year-old Catwoman dressed in a vicar’s doily who’d been scientifically reconstructed from scraps of medical waste. And now you’ve spoilt it, Megan Fox. Because you’re the new Catwoman, aren’t you?

Aren’t you? What’s that? Probably not? Oh.

With filming set to begin on Batman 3 next year, speculation has never been so rife. How many subordinates will Christian Bale bellow at during the filming? Which promising young star will die right before the movie’s release? If Christian Bale gives Batman that silly voice again for a third film, how far into the movie will it be before his larynx shears in half like a rusty pipe? We must know!

But at least we know who’s going to play Catwoman in Batman 3 now. It’s our dear friend Megan Fox, who’s presumably been chosen over Cher because Christopher Nolan didn’t want a Catwoman who looks as if chronic osteoporosis would hamper her whip skills, and chosen over Angelina Jolie because she’s about 40 times cheaper.

Except, well, don’t get your hopes up. Megan Fox hasn’t officially been signed to play Catwoman in Batman 3, and that’s probably for the following reasons:

1 - If Megan Fox starred in Batman 3, then Catwoman would be 12 years younger than Batman. Therefore, the sexual relationship between Batman and Catwoman would be replaced by scenes where Batman takes Catwoman to play on the swings and washes her by spitting into a tissue and then rubbing it all over her face.

2 – Megan Fox recently slagged off her latest Transformers movie, so big action franchise producers will be weary about working with her.

3 - This is plainly a lot of bollocks from Megan Fox’s camp because she wants to play Catwoman instead of Rachel Weisz, who is currently the favourite to get the role.

But let’s play along for a bit anyway. Hey The Sun, why would Megan Fox make a good Catwoman?

The Transformers stunner follows in the pawprints of Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry. But Megan, who has a slightly darker edge than her two predecessors, will be brilliant as Selina Kyle.

Oh, it’s because Megan Fox has a dark edge. That makes sense. We can see it now. Batman 3 will be about Catwoman – who turned to crime after realising that she wasn’t very good at acting – holding Gotham City to ransom by doing some acting for them, paralysing the population with the impossible choice of telling her that she’s not a very good actress and letting her carry on thinking that she’s a good actress just because she’s quite pretty.

And we just thought that this was news because it happens to be Bring Your Horny Teenage Son To Work Day at The Sun. Shows what we know, eh?

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8 - The soundtrack to the following video is this: “Badoaaaaah!” - I Am Bored

7 – Courtney Love writes 60 blog posts in a day. But she’s not mad. Oh no - MySpace

6 - A list of all the crappy things that people are fighting for today. Warning: contains scenes of lobster empathy – Cracked

5 - Hey, Winona Ryder. We see you’ve still got that whole ‘mental stare’ thing going on. How’s that working out for you - Laineygossip

4 – After The Dark Knight’s Oscar disqualification, here are some other films that suffered a similar fate – Cinematical

3 - Please spend the rest of the afternoon making these kickass paper planes – Popularmechanics

2 - But what happens if an aeroplane hits a cow? – I Am Bored

1 - Want to make a pneumatic cannon that fires golfballs 450 years? OK! – Instructables

So, come Oscar night, you’d expect that The Dark Knight would wipe the floor with the competition – especially since the competition seems to be a million underperforming films about gloomy people from 35 years ago – but you’re wrong.

It’s just been announced that The Dark Knight can’t win the Oscar for Best Score because it was composed by too many people. That’ll be disappointing for the crew of The Dark Knight, but they’ll get over it – not least because the 2009 Oscars will introduce categories for Best Irredeemably Bleak Summer Movie and Silliest And Most Indecipherable Voice Employed By A Lead Actor, which The Dark Knight is already a dead cert for.

Even before it was released, there was a heavy Oscar buzz surrounding The Dark Knight, and it was all down to Heath Ledger. By a) giving possibly the performance of his life as The Joker and b) dying young, Heath Ledger was guaranteed at least a nomination for Best Supporting Actor from the get-go.

But then The Dark Knight was released, and it seemed like Best Supporting Actor would be the tip of the iceberg. The script was dark and thematically complex, the cinematography was brave and experimental, the box office numbers were galactic, the costumes were pretty and – most importantly for Oscar voters – the film went on for about an hour longer than it should have done and featured endless scenes of a frowning man gazing into the middle distance.

To the casual observer, it looked as though The Dark Knight would win every single Oscar that it put itself in for, but already that’s not the case. The bleak, creepy score for The Dark Knight has been ruled ineligible for the Oscars, and it’s all thanks to the number of people who worked on it.

Apparently, Academy rules state that only the primary composer of a film’s score should be included on the cue sheet, but for The Dark Knight the names of everyone who added pieces of music to the score were added, and now it’s been disqualified. MTV reports:

Although the five people listed as composers on “The Dark Knight” — including Zimmer, [James Newton] Howard, music editor Alex Gibson, ambient music designer Mel Wesson and composer Lorne Balfe — signed an affidavit stating that Zimmer and Howard were the primary composers, the majority of the Academy sided against the duo’s eligibility.

Now, being disqualified from the Oscars for a minor technicality like that is bound to sting, but it’s not the end of the world for The Dark Knight. Here’s why:

1 - By adding Gibson, Balfe and Wesson to the cue sheet for The Dark Knight, Hans Zimmer has ensured that they’ll all receive royalties from the score’s use, so at least he gets the moral high ground.

2 - The Dark Knight is still pushing hard in the Best Picture category – the only Oscar that people actually care about – and at this point it’s hard to see how it could lose.

3 – Does anyone go and see a movie for the score? No they don’t. A win in this category isn’t exactly going to boost DVD sales, is it?

4 - This is the main reason. If The Dark Knight has been disqualified for entering its score into the Oscars, then it means none of it can be performed in one of those interminable musical interludes that bloat the Oscars ceremony out. And you know what that means? More avant garde performances featuring Latvian women dressed as little Dutch girls singing in a made-up language and hitting bicycles for percussion. Yay for that!

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9 - Dear pubs, please start selling drinks this way. We don’t care if it makes them poisonous or anything, just do it – I Am Bored

8 - Thriller: The Musical. Coming Soon. We wish we were joking – Guardian

7 – Bill Murray hits a man. A man. For a change. Allegedly – Holy Moly

6 - Hey, own an iPhone but don’t think you look like enough of a pikey using it? Then you need a set of THESE - Etretouchy

5 - That new Terminator film sure is going to be pretty. Crap, but pretty – Filmonic

4 - Well look at this. A World Of Warcraft user with too much time on his hands. Who’d have thought? – YouTube

3 – Baby Macbooks. Want one, regardless of dubious copyright laws – Gizmodo

2 - Thank God Prince William’s got ugly. We think Britain would sink into the sea if it ever got a passably attractive monarch, you know – Popsugar

1 – Pop songs in toy shops. Genius – Popjustice

The next time he was in court was for a space-camp lawsuit, and the time after that it was because Catwoman smacked him really hard with a bull-whip once. It was in the middle of a battle. The judge sided with the lady, possibly because she was all leathered-up.

But as anybody who has ever sued judicially knows, three lawsuits are never enough. That’s why Batman is currently sticking it to Christopher Nolan for getting all up in his business and ruining the awesome life he once had. Wait – did we say ‘..he once had’? Because we meant to say ‘..it once had.’ The Batman in this case is some crappy city in Turkey.

There was a time not so long ago that in the city of Batman, Turkey, a guy could really be a guy. You could walk down the street with half a pig slung over your shoulder, chewing chunks off it whenever you’d see fit. And the best part was – nobody would even say anything – because they were all publicly chomping half-pig too.

Then Christopher Nolan decided to destroy a good thing. He swooped in with his stupid Batman movies and turned Batman movies into such a tourist hot-spot that the city council soon ruled people could only indulge in their dead swine behind closed doors, or in their backyards.

Well the city’s good mayor doesn’t like this one bit – and he plans to personally take Christopher Nolan to task over this. Here’s part of the story straight off of a Turkish news website called Hurriyet.com:

“The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us … There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us,” Kalkan told to the Doğan news agency. Batman is a centuries old city, taking root in the Neolithic age but becoming significant when oil was found in the region at the end of 1940s. Almost a decade before that, Batman was created as a comic hero. Kalkan is going to sue Christopher Nolan, the director of the latest Batman movie “The Dark Night,” not DC Comics, the creator of the superhero.

It’s unknown whether the Mayor will sue in the American court system, or perhaps more locally from the big green barn located at the intersection of Main St & First South there in Batman’s financial district.

The only thing known for absolute certain is that Nolan will probably lose, and perhaps as lawsuit-payment the city will just want a production credit strong enough to make a noticeable difference in Batman 3. Like maybe Gotham could be  a suburb of Turkish Batman. Also maybe the superhero could use his numerous resources to wreak vengeance on the unholy Kurds that clog the world’s sewers with their inferior religious belief system.

Also maybe they could work Phillip Seymour Hoffman into the script. Yes, that would all blend quite nicely.

9 - A French man gets his arm stuck down a toilet. Ha ha ha – BBC

8 - Please let this be true: Guy Ritchie’s Madonna: The Movie – Holy Moly

7 – A slightly disgusting miles per gallon calculator for your own body – Carconnection

6 - Baconnaise. Exactly what it sounds like it is Thank you, geniuses – Holytaco

5 - An acorn cakelet pan! – Bakingbites

4 – The title of every single unmade music biopic ever – Best Week Ever

3 – Christopher Nolan dissects a scene from The Dark Knight. Fails to answer the question “Hey, what’s up with Batman’s silly voice?” – LA Times

2 - You know what we wish existed? Wine based on The Sopranoes. What? It exists?! – Videogum

1 – Jamie, a longtime hecklerspray reader, has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He’s keeping a spiffy, abnormally testicle-heavy, blog about it, though, so go read it – Cancerouscapers

No, because the producers of Smallville have struck upon another idea for a confusing, myth-raping TV show about a young superhero. Robin. Yes, Robin from Batman and Robin. But set before he met Batman. So basically a TV show about an annoyingly earnest little boy without any superpowers, then.

Still, that’s not going to stop the show from being made. It’s even got a name already – The Graysons. So, to correct our earlier mistake, this Robin programme will be a TV show about an annoyingly earnest little boy without any superpowers that sounds like it’s a bad 1970s sitcom. Can’t wait.

The Dark Knight has been such a barnstorming success that it’s already started a wave of frenzied speculation about who’ll appear in Batman 3. Some people want Johnny Depp as The Riddler, some people want Cher as Catwoman – but nobody, nobody at all, has even entertained the idea, even for a second, that Robin will be in Batman 3.

And it’s sort of easy to see why. As Batman’s overenthusiastic glass-half-full little helper, Robin is essentially Batman’s Scrappy Doo, except he does gymnastics, is considerably gayer and would be marginally more difficult to drown in a binbag. Robin is rubbish. Robin is so rubbish that the last lot of Batman movies went toxic the second that Robin was even mentioned.

However, Smallville is coming to an end soon – which is good, because it was starting to run the risk of being an allegory for puberty about a 40-year-old man who still lives with his parents – and CW needs something to replace it with. And people liked Smallville, right? And Batman. People like Batman. And Robin’s part of the Batman mythology, isn’t he? So why not make a Smallville-style TV show about the early years of Robin?

Why not? Because it sounds crap, that’s why not. But a little thing like common sense isn’t going to stop a gold-plated idea like this, as MSNBC reports:

The producers of CW’s “Smallville,” along with “Supernatural” exec producer McG, have a pilot in the works based on the Batman’s sidekick Robin, called “The Graysons,” Variety reports. “The Graysons” will reportedly chronicle the life of a young Dick “DJ” Grayson before he suited up to fight crime with the Dark Knight as Robin.

Do you see what they’ve done there? They’ve decided to call Robin DJ, because naming him after a cool job will easily make up for the fact that he’s a rubbish underdeveloped moon-faced infant gymnast who may as well be played by the little girl from the Narnia movies in a TV show set long before he developed a secret identity and became even halfway interesting.

But maybe The Graysons won’t be as bad as we’re making out. Maybe The Graysons will be just what television audiences need – a Littlest Hobo-style TV show about a family of nomadic gymnasts who travel from town to town, always managing to defeat local criminals by utilising their gymnastic skills.

It’s an excellent idea, and we can’t wait for episode one, where Robin goes after a gang of handbag-snatching hoodlums armed with only his eternally sunny mindset and a long satin ribbon attached to an industry regulation glassfibre rhythmic gymnastic stick.

You see, even though every single living organism on the face of the Earth has already been to see The Dark Knight about 17 times already, producers are scared that the Academy will forget about it come Oscar nomination time, which is why they’ve pencilled in another theatrical release of The Dark Knight for January.

Of course, by January The Dark Knight’s bloated special effects are going to look foolish up against the more intelligent, issue-led fare of awards season, which is why Christopher Nolan is currently busy re-editing the movie to make Batman look like the widower of mentally-disabled United Nations worker killed in Darfur by a missile built in Iraq but funded by the American government, who are obviously the real baddies in all of this.

The Dark Knight is officially a sensation. It’s the second-highest grossing movie in all of history; critics and fans have lavished it with praise, calling it one of the best movies ever made and it’s actually so good that we can’t even watch films any more because we end up projectile vomiting all over the upholstery because none of them are even a tenth as good as The Dark Knight.

But, despite all this, will The Dark Knight actually win any Oscars? Well, probably not. It might deserve a few, but it won’t win them for the following reasons:

1) Hollywood still has a stigma about rewarding superhero movies in the main Oscar categories.

2) The Dark Knight came out in the summer, and people only seriously consider movies for the Oscars if they’re released between October and February.

3) Sean Penn will probably release an incredibly serious movie right before the Oscars where he’ll play someone either disabled or historically significant and everyone who can vote for the Oscars will roll around on their backs playing with themselves going “Uuuuh, Sean Penn! Uuuuh, Sean Penn! Muh muh moo muh moo!” as soon as they see it and he’ll win everything instead.

Or at least that was the theory. But now the clever producers of The Dark Knight have struck upon a cunning ruse to jolt the movie back into everyone’s memory come Oscar time. No, sadly they’re not going to exhume Heath Ledger’s body and make it dance marionette-style to the hits of Prince up and down the streets of Hollywood right before Oscar night.

Instead they’re just going to release The Dark Knight in cinemas again in January. BBC News reports:

Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight could be re-released in cinemas in January, ay the height of the Oscar voting season. Warner Bros is in talks with Imax over the prospect of restoring the film to some big-screen theatres. It is hoped the push will help the film’s Academy Award chances, trade paper The Hollywood Reporter said.

Oh, OK, maybe we should calm down a little in that case. The Dark Knight is only going to get re-released at Imax cinemas. That means, if it’s anything like the last run, we’ll never get tickets to see it anyway because all the showings will be sold-out, even a month in advance, even at 3am.

So, in that case, we’ll be giving our Oscar vote to Sean Penn this year.

At least you’re guaranteed your own row at his movies.

Now the slightly better news – that still meant that The Dark Knight pulled in $75 million in sales this weekend, over $45 million more than its next best rival. Clearly, The Dark Knight is something of a weekend box office phenomenon.

So what can a forthcoming film – say, Vicky Christina Barcelona – do to match The Dark Knight’s weekend box office success? Easy – have Penelope Cruz killed by an accidental overdose and then convince Woody Allen to beat up his own mother a day after it opens. Also, if they could make the film inordinately long and so morally heavyhanded that it may as well be delivered by a wild-eyed redneck preacher, that’d be great too.

Well well, it looks like The Dark Knight has set some more records. By taking $75 million at the US weekend box office this week, it’s become the movie with the best-ever second weekend gross, beating Shrek 2 by a handful of million dollars.

Added to The Dark Knight’s other records – like biggest opening day, biggest opening week, biggest opening weekend, fastest movie to $200 million, most depressing mainstream film ever, film most benefited by a case of alleged mother-abuse, most successful movie about an oddly-dressed man standing on top of a series of skyscrapers in a ridiculously serious way – then it’s clear that The Dark Knight is, um, popular. Or something.

Here’s this week’s US weekend box office top five…

1 - The Dark Knight (Fed up of all the Batman 3 speculation already? Wondering if it’ll be Catwoman or The Penguin who’ll square off against Batman? Well worry no more, because we know who the Batman 3 villain will be – Batman’s arch enemy The Part Time Old Lady Clown Who Batman Is Related To. Fear her, Batman!) $75,630,000

2 - Step Brothers (Well who’d have thought it? The Dark Knight – the film that’s got halfway to Titantic’s all-time box office figure in just two weekends and is apparently one of the best movies ever is more popular at the weekend box office than Will Ferrell being the exact same character he is in everything he ever does for the 60th time) $30,000,000

3 - Mamma Mia! (Mamma Mia is, of course, the traditional Italian expression of surprise or anguish. However, in an ironic twist not a single Italian said “Mamma mia,” when they heard Pierce Brosnan slaughter SOS in the movie Mamma Mia. That’s because they were all too busy screaming “Ouch, il mio cazzo orecchie! Penso che il mio cervello è stato permanentemente danneggiato, è pelosa vecchio bastardo!”) $17,865,000

4 - The X-Files: I Want To Believe (Warning: unwanted sequel to a movie of a TV show that hasn’t been popular for a decade and a half in ‘underwhelming weekend box office’ shock. Still, Christopher Nolan must be thrilled that he left the scene of Billy Connolly staggering around with blood dripping from his eyes out of The Dark Knight. That’s clearly box office poison) $10,200,000

5 - Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (So what’s at the centre of the Earth? Dinosaurs and massive fish, apparently. Eat it, magma scientists) $9,415,000

Read more:

Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

But, in all of this possibly-illegal motherclown-beating kerfuffle, one question has stood out above all others – what makes a newly-minted megastar like Christian Bale start whaling on his mother and sister on the happiest day of his life?

Turns out the reason might be cash. According to reports today, Christian Bale kicked off after his sister asked him for £100,000 to help raise her three children. Frankly we’re disgusted – doesn’t Christian Bale know that all children have the right to receive occasional gifts of more than the average British annual working wage that their mother has managed to guilt out of their moviestar uncle? Shame on you, Mr Bale. Shame on you indeed.

One of the downsides to being famous is that your success tends to attract unwanted curiosity – people know that you’re loaded and they want to take a little slice of your cash for themselves.

When this happens the best thing you can do is to retreat into the bosom of your family. But if you’re Christian Bale, and it’s your family that’s doing the begging, well then you’re pretty much effed up the bum.

That’s apparently the reason for Christian Bale’s still-bemusing assault arrest this week. For the newcomers among you, Christian Bale was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of assaulting his mother and sister right before the London premiere of The Dark Knight. He denies the charges and his family denies calling the police.

Since then, Christian Bale has been bailed and the assault has been described as a strong verbal attack, possibly combined with a mild push. At first the reason for this alleged attack was that Bale’s mother was slagging off his wife, but now The Sun has spoken to a source who claims that Christian Bale got a bit shirty when his sister Sharon asked for £100,000 to help raise her kids:

“Christian is a very wealthy young man and was asked to help his sister out financially. He was asked to loan her £100,000 but he refused and that caused an almighty row. During that row, the women claim, he assaulted them by pushing and shoving them… They are both devastated that it has come to this but want him to be taught a lesson.”

Yeah! Jesus, Christian Bale is such a bastard, isn’t he? He deserves to be taught a lesson – the lesson that you’re supposed to financially bail out any of your relatives who appear to be either greedy or living beyond their means whenever they want just because you’ve starred in a couple of films about a funny-voiced crimefighter in a gimp suit.

Sharon Bale could hardly ask any other members of her family for support, could she? Her mother’s a part-time clown – what kind of financial help could she possibly offer? Those kids need £100,000, not a shipment of abnormally large shoes and a tiny spluttering car that keeps falling apart!

Still, not to worry – even though Christian Bale chose not to help his nieces and nephews out, they’ll still get their cash one way or the other. Probably from all the royalties from their forthcoming memoirs I Wear Rags Because My Uncle Is Stingy And Allegedly A Bit Violent.

That is, unless you decide to go home and assault your mum and sister, as it was alleged Christian Bale had gone and done yesterday. That takes things a bit far, away from the Pacino not talking to people unless they address his character ’slight mentalness’ and well into the zone of ‘whoops he may well just be a bit odd in the head’.

But rejoice! For the Baler has bailed out of the cop shop pending further questioning!

Though that does mean he may go and strike again, if he did do anything in the first place. God knows the tabloids warn us of these repeat offenders in Gordon Brown’s Britain.

It must have been difficult for the police questioning Bale, what with his penchant for not revealing any personal information in interviews, ever. The fact that he makes a habit of staying in character – accents and all – beyond filming and throughout promotional tours may well have pushed the whole police grilling into the realms of farcical. You could say it was something of a Dark Knight for all involved.

Amid rampant speculation about how or why Bale may have attacked his family comes very little in the way of actual, concrete information. There has been speculation that he simply shouted at his mum after she said something about his wife. But Christian’s close relatives are keeping just as schtum as the Batman himself, so we are still in the dark.
This, of course, irritates us in the world of highbrow journalism at hecklerspray, as it means we don’t get to employ our nifty quote function. There is this though, a statement released by Bale’s lawyer Simon Smith – it works as an excuse to bring up those large quotation marks:

“Christian Bale attended a London police station today on a voluntary basis. Bale, who denies the allegation, co-operated throughout, gave his account in full of the events in question, and has left the station without any charge being made against him by the police.”

No charges have been made as of yet, and Bale has been ordered to return for further questioning in September. That gives him nearly two months to roam the streets. Maybe all that time spent working with Russell Crowe on 3:10 To Yuma wasn’t a complete waste after all, and Christian took away some fine life lessons on things like phone hurling and general fighting round the world.

We can only hope that the release of Terminator Salvation, which stars Bale, isn’t hampered by a similar incident of alleged assault. Who knows? We can say one thing for certain about the Baler – he really is unpredictable.

Simple, you go a bit mental, attack your mother and sister and get arrested on suspicion of assault for it. True, it might not be the obvious way around the problem, but it’s what Christian Bale allegedly has done.

So with Heath Ledger dead and Christian Bale arrested for assault, it seems like The Dark Knight might be carrying a dark curse. We’ll know for sure as soon as Michael Caine climbs up a church tower and starts firing a machine gun at passers-by and crying, but for now it’s just a pretty strong hunch.

Christian Bale is a fascinating actor, not just because he can completely transform his body to disappear into a role, but also because he refuses to discuss his personal life in interviews. This, Christian Bale claims, is because it would detract from the mysticism of the craft, but we’re not convinced.

Maybe Christian Bale doesn’t discuss his personal life in interviews because he’s a right old mental loony.

It seems plausible since, just a few days after his new Batman movie The Dark Knight became the biggest-opening movie ever, Christian Bale has been arrested on suspicion of kicking lumps out of his sister and 61-year-old mother. BBC News reports:

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said a 34-year-old man had been arrested in connection with an allegation of assault, and remained in custody. Mr Bale is alleged to have lashed out at his mother and sister in his suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel on Sunday.

We know. It makes no sense whatsoever, does it?

Christian Bale has never really given off any signs of having a barmy side to him, and this week – the week that The Dark Knight became a genuine phenomenon – should have been one of the happiest of Bale’s life.

Having said that, we like to attack members of our family in times of great joy as well – we got three numbers on the lottery a couple of months ago and we were so happy that we took a cricket bat to granny’s shins. Plus every time hecklerspray wins an award we go out and cheerfully drown a nephew in the river. So we can totally see where Christian Bale is coming from. If he did it, of course.

Of course, Christian Bale hasn’t been charged yet, so it’d be wrong to assume that he’s guilty of anything. It could all just be a giant misunderstanding.

Or perhaps Christian Bale just sank so deep into the psyche of one of his characters that he reacted in a way that was completely unlike him. In which case we’re probably right in thinking that the pervading theme of Batman 3 will involve Batman throwing a great big mardy sulk when his mum comes round and tells him that he’s getting a little bit too big for his boots.

More than that, though, The Dark Knight is the biggest-ever movie at the number one box office – to the tune of $155 million. That’s even more than Spider-Man 3 managed. The Dark Knight better than a film about Kirsten Dunst doing a dance about some eggs? Wow, that is good.

What’s more impressive is that The Dark Knight managed to be the best ever movie at the US weekend box office even though it’s an overlong pitch-black morality tale made notorious by the death of one of its stars. That means that The Dark Knight is also the most depressing box office megahit since at least Big Momma’s House 2 came out.

Looking at the list of all the other movies that have at one point had the biggest-ever weekend box office grosses, there are some pretty big names on the list. Spider-Man, Pirates Of The Caribbean – but now The Dark Knight has topped the lot of them. That’s right – the death of Heath Ledger is the new Johnny Depp’s funny run, or something.

The runaway weekend box office success of The Dark Knight just goes to show that movie audiences are sophisticated enough to enjoy complex, endlessly deep meditations on the similarity between good and evil after all.

And, given Hollywood’s love of ripping off other successful ideas, we’re now looking forward to seeing the upcoming reinvention of Digby The Biggest Dog In The World, which will now be four hours long, shot entirely at night and have a profound philosophical core based on Eliezer Yudkowsky’s principles of Singularitarianism.

Here’s this week’s US weekend box office top five…

1 - The Dark Knight (As exciting as it is, The Dark Knight might just go down in history as the most depressing movie to be crowned biggest-ever film at the weekend box office. And now the focus will turn to how Christopher Nolan plans to top The Dark Knight – we’d imagine that it’ll involve a noose being given away with each movie ticket in case the audience feels like hanging themselves at the futility of it all by the halfway point) $155,304,000

2 - Mamma Mia! (Forget the deformed face of Harvey Dent, the unexplained motives of The Joker or the constant reminders of Heath Ledger’s untimely death – by far the scariest thing about this week’s weekend box office is the sound of Pierce Brosnan caterwauling his way through SOS like Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagon repeatedly stubbing his toe on a breezeblock made of stinging nettles in Mamma Mia!) $27,605,000

3 - Hancock (Number three? That’s rubbish! Perhaps Hancock would have fared better if it had taken a leaf out of the number one and number two movies at the weekend box office, and either starred a dead bloke or featured a song and dance number performed by a man who sounds like a wounded dog drowning at the bottom of an abandoned well. Next time, Will Smith. Next time) $14,000,000

4 - Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (Forget Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, we want to know why Space Chimps only got to number seven at the weekend box office. Sure, The Dark Knight probably stole some of its audience away but, come on, Space Chimps? It’s called Space Chimps, for crying out loud. You’ve disappointed us, America) $11,910,000

5 - Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Hellboy II managed to lose 70% of its opening weekend audience in the space of seven days. Meanwhile, Meet Dave only lost 68.9%. Suck it, Hellboy II: The Golden Army!) $9,813,000

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Weekend Box Office – Box Office Mojo

So much so, that Christian Bale is itching to make a third Batman movie already. Bale says he's looking forward to seeing whether Christopher Nolan can top the 'artistry' and 'emotional intensity' of this film, and that he'd love to be a part of it.

Yeah yeah yeah – listen, Christian Bale can spout as much nonsense about artistic worth as he likes, because we all know why he wants to make another Batman film. It's because Batman law quite clearly states that the third Batman movie in any series is the point where the Bat-nipple comes into play. You'd have to be a crazy person to turn down the Bat-nipple.

Christian Bale is mad-bent on revisiting all the old franchises that have been left for dead, isn't he? First he decided to become Batman, then he signed on to make a load of new Terminator films. What next?

Personally we're hoping that he takes the lead in a new clutch of dark, emotionally-intense Ernest movies. You know, we really want to know what profound psychological childhood trauma Ernest went through before the events of Ernest Goes To Camp took place, and Christian Bale's the only man for the job in our opinion.

But if that doesn't happen, Christian Bale is happy to just churn out more Batman films until the end of time. The Dark Knight hasn't even been released yet, but it's already whipping up a gigantic storm of hype thanks in part to Heath Ledger's untimely death, and Christian Bale wants to see if everyone can repeat the trick without anyone dying this time. If Magazine reports:

"The possibility of doing another one is completely Chris Nolan's decision and if he's doing it, then absolutely," Bale says. "He's presented himself with a huge challenge of surpassing this one I believe, and very much so with surpassing the Joker as a villain. You know, how do you up that? It's a very tricky thing to do. If anybody can do it, I think Chris can. So that's his choice."

Bale's absolutely right, of course – the third sequel traditionally provides film-makers with a vast amount of artistic choices. For instance, should Batman 3 go the way of Beverly Hills Cop 3 and be set in a funfair? Should it go the way of Jaws 3 and be a 3D movie where the baddie gets blown up at the end after eating a grenade? Or should Batman 3 go the way of Spider-Man 3 and feature an egg-based dance number and a haircut that makes people evil?

All three, hopefully. Just so long as there's no Robin. We can't even ironically entertain the idea of that option happening.