Chapter 602: The Biggest Winner

"The Joker believes everyone is inherently evil, that trust simply cannot exist. He only needs to give people a 'little push,' and they'll abandon justice, become selfish and hideous, betray others, and even kill their own comrades."

Taking the coffee cup Scarlett handed him, Duke explained, "In the script's framework, the weapon for the Joker's 'little push' is the fear inside people's hearts. He believes everyone only loves themselves and their families. As long as you threaten those lives, anyone will abandon their bottom line and turn into a monster."

"One of the Joker's goals," Duke concluded, "is to break through everyone's bottom line."

Scarlett seemed to understand. "According to you," she asked curiously, "the Joker is the real protagonist of The Dark Knight."

"That's pretty much the reality."

In that movie from his past life, Heath Ledger's performance was certainly outstanding, but the Joker's conceptualization was the key. It was the character itself that gave Ledger the opportunity for such an explosive performance.

In The Dark Knight, Christian Bale's performance wasn't bad, but facing such an incredible character, he was completely overshadowed.

To a certain extent, the performances in the film were slightly unbalanced.

However, this was Batman after all. Even cloaked in the dark, realistic style of a crime thriller, it remained an uncompromising Batman movie. Bruce Wayne would naturally capture the audience's attention.

With The Dark Knight officially greenlit, a series of pre-production preparations began.

First, the film's preliminary estimated production budget was 150 million dollars. Since Doug Walter chose to support Duke, the backing was absolute. Besides, Duke had never been a bottomless pit of a director like James Cameron, and Warner Brothers would appropriately increase their investment according to his subsequent needs.

On the day of the press conference, 50 million dollars in start-up funds were transferred into the third-party guarantee company's account.

Although a third-party guarantee brought some hassle, Duke had been filming and producing under this system for so many years that he was already used to it.

After the funds arrived, Duke held auditions for the two new major characters. Several famous actors, including Nicolas Cage and Heath Ledger, auditioned for Harvey Dent and the Joker.

The auditions only went for one round before Duke locked in Nicolas Cage. This former Oscar best actor had been sliding toward becoming the king of bad movies, and taking on too many scripts and projects in recent years had caused his reputation and performances to continuously decline. However, his Oscar-winning acting skills were still there. As long as he could maintain a normal state, handling a character like Harvey Dent wouldn't be difficult.

The only thing that slightly worried Duke was Nicolas Cage's old problem. When he was in top form, his acting could practically rival Tom Hanks. When he was off, he was even worse than Orlando Bloom.

Moreover, his form was always erratic; his performance within the same movie could display a difference as vast as heaven and earth.

But Duke had collaborated with many actors over the years and was highly experienced. He had a certain level of confidence in both himself and Nicolas Cage, who was in desperate need of self-redemption.

To tackle the role of Two-Face, Nicolas Cage proved his commitment after passing the audition. He enrolled in a psychology counseling class, deciding to study dissociative identity disorder for the character.

Obviously, Nicolas Cage knew that this collaboration with Duke would be a rare opportunity to turn his career around.

Of course, Duke wouldn't deny that selecting Nicolas Cage out of so many actors was partly because his acting and image were somewhat guaranteed. But more importantly, it was because of Sofia Coppola.

This was Hollywood. Interpersonal connections within the rules often played a vital role. This was also a major reason why actors and directors from showbiz families found it easier to succeed.

Even in a commercial society, no one could deny the power of a networking web.

The role of the Joker similarly had several famous actors competing for it.

Robin Williams, Lachy Hulme, Paul Bettany, and Oscar best actor Adrien Brody all participated in the auditions and publicly showed goodwill toward the crew, expressing strong interest in playing the "Joker."

Perhaps it was a preconceived notion, or perhaps Heath Ledger's audition was genuinely outstanding, but Duke passed on Adrien Brody, who was willing to lower his salary to 500,000 dollars, and still chose Heath Ledger.

That big-nosed Jewish actor had pretty good acting skills, but even with an Oscar best actor title under his belt, he was actually in a similar boat to Heath Ledger—he basically lacked any commercial box office appeal. Heath Ledger's own asking price wasn't high either. Under roughly equal conditions, Duke couldn't find a single reason to choose Adrien Brody.

However, Duke hadn't expected that right after the crew signed the formal acting contract with Heath Ledger, the Australian actor would seek him out with a specific request.

"Director Rosenberg..."

Seeing Heath Ledger sitting across the desk looking a bit shy, Duke cut him off. "Duke. Just call me Duke."

Heath Ledger was clearly an introverted person. He forced a smile and asked, "Duke, could I hold off on joining the crew for now?"

"Why?" Duke couldn't help but frown.

"I think the Joker is a very unique character."

Speaking of the character he was about to portray in front of the camera, Heath Ledger's shyness vanished without a trace. "I want to find a quiet, completely undisturbed environment to spend some time researching this role."

Hearing this, Duke couldn't help but take a serious look at Heath Ledger. He was a young, handsome actor; his bright eyes, partially hidden behind a few strands of falling blond hair, radiated the fanaticism of an actor encountering a role they genuinely loved.

Since he planned to cast Heath Ledger, Duke had ordered a background check on him. No one would have thought that such an actor with a face full of sunshine had already been addicted to prescription drugs for several years.

In the past, many people moved by the Joker consoled themselves by believing that Heath Ledger had gotten too deep into the role, forcing him to rely on medication and resulting in his fatal overdose. But the reality wasn't like that at all...

Shaking his head internally, Duke didn't say much more and nodded in agreement to Heath Ledger's request.

According to the information he'd gathered, Heath Ledger was not only introverted but also quite sensitive and despised people bringing up his private life. Duke knew very well that even if he wanted to drop a few indirect hints or warnings, now was not the time.

After all, the two of them only had a simple commercial partnership.

In Hollywood, the relationships between actors and directors, as well as between actors themselves, were far more complicated than imagined.

Many things could never be put into practice just because someone wanted to say or do them.

Only an idiot would naively think that just because they wanted to be friends with a famous actor, the other party would definitely reciprocate.

Yes, countless Hollywood actors wanted to work with Duke, but they didn't necessarily want to be his friend.

Then again, given Duke's personality, even if the other party intended to get on his good side, he would scrutinize them several times over.

Just like Nicolas Cage—if Sofia Coppola hadn't spoken up, Duke absolutely wouldn't have taken the initiative to lend him a hand.

Having someone see Heath Ledger out, Duke left Duke Studio and headed to Warner Studios.

Similar to Batman Begins, the filming of The Dark Knight was mainly divided into three parts: the first part was set construction on the soundstages at Warner Studios, the second part was the renovation of the hangar soundstages at the Hughes Aircraft Plant, and the third part was location shooting in Chicago.

Currently, Duke had also split the crew's advance scouting team into three segments. Anna Printz was responsible for set construction at Warner Studios and the Hughes Aircraft Plant; John Schwartzman led a team to Chicago for on-site scouting of the location shooting areas; and Duke and Charles Roven managed and reviewed all pre-production work.

The planned pre-production time for this film was 100 days, with a shooting schedule of three months. Like his previous two movies, Duke was striving to make it in time for a release at the start of next year's summer season.

Set construction wasn't something that could be completed in the short term. Many different sets could be built concurrently with filming. In comparison, the styling for Batman, the Joker, Harvey Dent, and others had to be finalized as soon as possible.

Since they would continue to use actors from the previous film, such as Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Laurence Fishburne, and Anne Hathaway, their costume and styling designs were relatively quick to handle.

The rivals, the Joker and Batman, were the focus. Especially Batman—many of his gadgets would be updated. The film's sponsor, Lamborghini, also needed to design a breathtakingly cool Batcycle based on the Batmobile.

Additionally, Batman's Batsuit had to be redesigned and manufactured. Duke intended to limit Bruce Wayne's abilities. He was just an ordinary man with masterful combat skills; if he wanted his movements to be faster, the Batsuit could only be made thinner and simpler.

The IMAX Company also sent over two massive IMAX Cameras, and a technical squad stationed themselves with the crew. Once John Schwartzman returned from Chicago, they would assist the production team in familiarizing themselves with the equipment.

These IMAX Cameras were several times the size of standard cameras. How to utilize these bulky giants to shoot those highly impactful shots in the film was also a problem Duke needed to consider.

When it came to IMAX camera technology, Duke was an absolute novice.

However, he had always been someone who knew how to learn, and he knew that IMAX production technology was the future trend of development. In his free time after work, he frequently sought advice from the IMAX Company's technical engineers.

Duke spent the entire month of July busy with the pre-production of The Dark Knight. By early August, when the preparatory work had taken basic shape, the summer season in North America had already ended. Iron Man had become the biggest winner of the 2006 summer season in the North American film market.