The Dark Knight’s total gross as of Monday morning is $997,535,317, and it is expected to cross the $1 billion mark when it is re-released in January (to remind those Oscar folk how good it is).
Meanwhile, Variety say that the major of a town in southeastern Turkey named “Batman” is suing director Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. for royalties from The Dark Knight. Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, has accused the film’s producers of using the city’s name without permission.
“There is only one Batman in the world,” Kalkan said. “The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”
The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film’s success has had on the town’s inhabitants.
Former natives of Batman are also said to have encountered obstacles when attempting to register their businesses abroad. The mayor is working on gathering together evidence he claims will show that the city of Batman predates the 1939 debut of Bob Kane’s superhero in DC Comics.
I have one question for Huseyin Kalkan:
Why so serious?
