Marketing The Dark Knight After Heath Ledger’s Death

Rick Marshall

Rick Marshall was Online Managing Editor for ComicMix before joining MTV's SplashPage. Previously, he was Online Content Manager for Wizard Entertainment. He has written for several daily newspapers, alternative weekly newspapers, trade magazines and online media, and was named "Writer of the Year" by the New York Press Association in 2005.

You may also like...

3 Responses

  1. Shawn Levasseur says:

    I doubt much will change for the film's marketing, other than Mr. Ledger's abscense from the promotional media tours, and the remaining cast having to answer questions about him.Brendan Lee's death on the set of "The Crow" was a much greater hurdle, since the man died in the process of making the film. The movie's theme of death and loss, with Brendan's character being one of the deaths in the film didn't make matters much easier.

  2. Vinnie Bartilucci says:

    They also did a massive scavenger-hunt like game at San Diego last year which required people on the ground there to cooperate with people at home on their computers, trading clues with each other. They had a sky-typer drawing phone numbers in the sky, the phone number gave you a web site, and so on. Eventually you'd find a person who made your face up like Joker's for free. As fun as these things are, the point the article makes is a good one – they really don't reach anyone other than the hardcore internet viewers. Of course, that market are often the "first adopters" that movies need to make that first weekend a real smash.They've been very careful with all the bat-sites to tell people to maintain caution when doing the stunts, to avoid another ATHF/Boston scenario.I remember the stuff they did for AI, with a whole second storyline about a pleasure robot killing a college student (IIRC). They had interactive stuff like certain letters flashed in the credits of the trailer – you froze the clip, wrote the letters down and they spelled a web address, and down the rabbit hole you went.When the Cloverfield website hysteria started, a site for an RPG called AlphaOmega was incorrectly tagged as being cloverfield-related, and the hitrate SKYROCKETED. As soon as it was shown not to be related, it was dropped like an ugly date the morning after the prom.Heroes is still doing it, with websites and emails coming from "dead" character Hanna Gittleman, who, while only making one or two appearances on the show proper, is a major character in the comics and online experience.

  3. Sal Loria says:

    http://www.thedarkknight.com has a tribute page up for Heath Ledger. On http://www.whysoserious.com, the other "official" website, they've added a black ribbon. Aside from that, still no word.