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At the 81st Academy Awards The Dark Knight won in two of the eight categories the picture was nominated in, Best Editing and Best Supporting Actor. To accept his Oscar the family of Heath Ledger went to the stage and delivered their acceptance speech...

After its re-release into theaters, The Dark Knight finally crossed the $1 billion dollar mark in ticket sales worldwide. Warner Bros. announced that, as of yesterday, the movie had taken in $1,001,082,160. It is the highest-grossing movie in the history of Warner Bros. and second in box office to 1997's Titanic (which earned $1.8 billion.)

Variety reports that Warner Bros. will not release The Dark Knight in China. "Based on a number of pre-release conditions that are being attached to The Dark Knight as well as cultural sensitivities to some elements of the film, we have opted to forego a theatrical release of the film in China," the studio said in a press release. The movie was not even submitted to the Chinese film board for consideration.

The Chinese government has been very careful about what films get released in its land, often censoring material that its officials deem as culturally sensitive. Two possible reasons why Warners may not have chosen to try and get The Dark Knight into Chinese theaters: one, there's an action sequence that takes place in Hong Kong where Batman goes to apprehend a corrupt Chinese businessman; and two, the appearance of Edison Chen in the film, a popular Hong Kong pop star who had his star tarnished among his fanbase when photos of him engaged in sexual relations with several women turned up on Asian websites.

And just like that the two composers behind the score for The Dark Knight are back in the running for an Oscar.

Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's epic music for this summer's superhero blockbuster had originally been excluded from the upcoming Academy Award list of possible Oscar winners due to five musicians listed on the credits. Even with a signed statement from the three musicians that worked with Zimmer and Howard stating that the duo were responsible for creating at least 80% of the original music found in The Dark Knight, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ruled that the film's score could not be considered in the Best Original Score category for the 2008 Oscars. Generally the Academy won't allow any film scores credited to more than two composers to be in the running for the category, which is where The Dark Knight's score originally wound up.

However, the Academy has now reversed its previous ruling after reconsidering the case and the Zimmer/Howard score can be among the potential Oscar candidates -- that is, if it makes the cut from the upcoming nomination process. The 81st Academy Awards ceremony will take place on February 22, 2009.

Warner Bros. has made it official and has announced that it will re-release The Dark Knight into both theaters and IMAX venues on January 23, 2009. The exact number of screens that Dark Knight will play on wasn't revealed.

"The Dark Knight is a crowning achievement in every sense of the word," said Dan Fellman, the president of domestic distribution for the movie studio. "We wanted to provide one more opportunity for moviegoers to experience it on the big screen as it was meant to be seen."

As it stands today, The Dark Knight has grossed $530.5 million dollars domestically at the box office, making it the second all-time highest-grossing picture for North American cinemas. With an additional $465.9 million raked in from worldwide audiences the movie has acculumated $996.4 million dollars total. If it earns an additional $4 million in its re-release then The Dark Knight will be the fourth film to gross $1 billion dollars in theaters.

A little Dark Knight mash-up fun for your weekend: what happens when you put the Dark Knight trailer’s audio to scenes from Toy Story 2? Buzz Lightyear is Batman, Woody is the Joker, and you’re transported away from the stock market woes for a couple minutes.

During an interview with MTV Splash Page, actor Mark Ruffalo admits that he auditioned for the role of Harvey Dent/Two-Face in the film, and talks a little bit about comic book movies.

Huzzah! Warners has finally announced The Dark Knight DVD info! The film will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD on December 9, and be chockfull of all sorts of goodies. As JoBlo noted back on August 14, there will be a single-disc DVD, plus a two-disc Special Edition DVD and a two-disc Blu-ray. The Blu-ray will also have a special limited edition that includes a Batpod. The Digital Bits has all the specs and features.

In the 1970s, the comic book writer/artist team of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams created the Dark Knight archetype that Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer translated to the screen. O’Neil actually created Ra’s Al Ghul for the comics back in 1971, then wrote the death of that character when he adapted Batman Begins for its novelization (he novelized The Dark Knight, too). Now O’Neil is writing his first Batman comic in 28 years, and Comic Book Resources took the opportunity to ask him what he thought of the two modern Bat films.

"Both [films] were terrific and I’m glad to be associated with them," the writer said. "Nolan is creating his own version of the mythos and it’s as valid as any that preceded it by any criteria, and more valid in terms of his own art form."

Latino Review does a round-up of various trade-newspaper articles on a clever studio marketing scheme. It seems that Warners wants to make sure you Oscar voters remember which card to play on your ballot this year (the Joker), so they’re planning to re-release The Dark Knight in theaters this January during voting season. They’re also in talks to release it in IMAX theaters as well, so the Bat might just fly again in 3D.

The Dark Knight tops $500 million dollars today at domestic theaters, making TDK the second-highest-grossing film of all time for our little corner of the world. This makes Warner Bros. ecstatic and Titanic nervous as the #1 grossing film watches the Bat scale the wall toward its $600-million-grossing catbird seat.

What’s better than The Dark Knight trailer (in a completely different way)? How about TDK done by a bunch of kids? See your favorite moments recreated with Big Wheels, and your favorite dialogue out of the mouths of babes (well, ten-year-olds, anyway).

Only two weeks till Labor Day weekend and the end of summer, and but Hollywood is already starting to celebrate the fact that this summer’s box office should match last year’s record-breaking $4.16 billion – and last year, remember, had the trio of threequels (Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Pirates of the Carribbean: At World’s End). What hero could help vanquish a low economy and high gas prices? Wayne, Bruce Wayne.

Okay, it’s not just The Dark Knight, but his $400 million – and a number of films that appealed to all types of moviegoers, from Iron Man to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to Wall-E. And some, like Speed Racer and The Love Guru, who didn’t help so much.

Want to read the script for The Dark Knight, but haven’t picked up the Dark Knight art book yet? Thank JoBlo for a TDK PDF that they’re offering up.

As with all of Christopher Nolan’s screenplays, even if you’ve seen the film you’ll get a whole other appreciation for Nolan’s work by reading the tightly-written script. And while you’re enjoying this script, don’t forget to thank Nolan’s co-writer, his brother Jonathan, too for the great work.

Well, it had to happen sometime. After four weekends at number one, The Dark Knight has lost its weekend crown to the new Ben Stiller comedy, Tropic Thunder. But Dark Knight’s $16.3-million box office means that its domestic total is $471.5 million which means it overtakes Star Wars’ $461 million as the fourth-highest grossing film of all time.

Christopher Nolan’s pic smacks down George Lucas’ in another way as well: this week George’s new animated film, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, opened -- and came in third, trailing The Dark Knight at $15.5 million. And all this happened while the US was in the middle of Olympics fever – last night’s Olympics broadcast was NBC’s best-watched Saturday-night show for the last 18 years – which means the Thunder, the Bat and the Clone might have made even more money otherwise.