The Joker Revealed?

Fans of Batman the Dark Knight are in full uproar at the moment, thanks to some clever internet fakery; we think.

A week or so ago in an attempt at viral marketing by Warner Bros. Entertainment to promote the new upcoming Batman movie, The I Believe in Harvey Dent website featured a campaign poster for the fictional character to be played by Aaron Eckhart.

And while this has been met by much fan approval, it was followed by what can only be an elaborate hoax of the Batman fan base. A new site, IBelieveinHarveyDentToo.com (note the ‘too’ on the end), was introduced to the internet. It sported a reworked version of the campaign poster, obviously intended to look like the Joker had gratified the poster.

This alone could have been believed to be a piece of fan fakery, and would have faded in to the archives of the internet. However it held one more surprise. Upon clicking on the image you would be treated to what is apparently an image of Heath Ledger, decked out in his Joker make up.

Movie sites such as IGN and IMDB have taken this as gospel, and have run with it, posting the image for all to see and declaring that this is another piece of guerilla marketing from WB. However, if you take a closer look at the behind the scenes of the website, doubts begin to appear; at least for those of us willing to see them.

Whereas the previous IBelieveinHarveyDent.com site was registered to Warner Bros. the new website is registered at GoDaddy.com, a popular web-hosting company both affordable and simple to use. The fact that we were required to input our email address is another surprise that is not something that would be used by a multi-national corporation. And while some may cry that this is the essence of guerilla marketing, the discrepancies between the two sites (both apparently the same type of marketing strategy) just do not ring true.

So stay tuned, and wait with me as I look forward to seeing the big movie-news sites eating crow before long.

Posted by Josh Hill