Weird. The same picture is my Facebook profile pic right now.

What a fucking tragedy.

I never get too bummed out regarding celebrity deaths, but this one really hit me. I just heard the news a little more than a hour ago, when a friend of mine called me up about it. I asked him, "Are you fucking joking me?" I said that again. Then he came into the dining hall, and I saw his face. That's all I needed to know.

He had such a promising career ahead of him. I adored his performance in "Brokeback Mountain," and his "The Dark Knight" performance looked to be a marvel. I'm quite sure that it still will. Damn shame we'll never be able to congratulate him.

My condolences go out to his family (especially his 2 year-old daughter...Christ) and friends. RIP, Mr. Ledger.

Wow...I'm speechless

I heard about this during school today, and I've got to say that it is quite a shocking loss. I thought Ledger was one of the most promising of rising talents in Hollywood.

R.I.P. Heath Ledger

I miss him already, somehow.

I was thinking about this while looking at President Palmer's avatar, which is essentially a poster of Ledger behind a frosted glass window painting a bloody smile on it with the words "why so serious?" plastered over his head.

If nothing else, they'll have to completely rethink their marketing on the film.

Offcourse they have to use The Joker in the marketing. TDK is really all Joker. Its what everyone has been waiting for since the final scene of Batman Begins. In the end the WB is out there to make money - and if though they will be tasteful - "The Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger" will indeed be marketed for all to see - just like if he was alive. Its then up to the media to make the connection to his death - and hence the publicity.

Does anyone remember the marketing for The Crow? Brandon Lee was essentially playing a zombie in that movie, so I'd be curious how the studio worked that.

Yeah; hell be marketed no doubt though we can scratch the whole joker-gore shit. so i dont think its that big of a problem.

but i know the timings off, but indiana jones is not the event of 2008 any more. TDK publicity just exploded by 100 million;all the talk next july will be tdk and how ledger is and if word is hes amazing...

im thinking post humerous oscars and ledger goes down as the new james dean.

From what I remember about The Crow, the studio did not promote the movie using Lee's death. That's what I seem to recall, at least. It was 14 years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy.

I quickly went to check something at cnn.com as my 2pm lecture was starting and I saw this on the front page. Quickly zoomed over to The Water Cooler and saw there was already a page going. I shut off my laptop and was in shock.

It hit me really hard and I don't know why exactly. Obviously was a combination of reasons but this has got to be, as Dkmuto said, the most shocking industry death of our generation. I've been immersed in Heath Ledger news for the past 90 minutes and as I'm writing, I'm still having a hard time swallowing it.

I realized after 40 minutes of lecture, I hadn't written almost any notes. My heart had sunk for quite a while and I was lost in sorrow and thought.



I think that's how I feel. I thought I had processed it but it just hit me again while writing this post.

I'm glad he had finished the last major project he was working on. I don't know why people are so worried about the Joker character for later films. They can easily cast someone else if it's a whole other film. And all the promo ad work they'd need Ledger for, I'm sure they have enough to make do with.

What I am most interested in, as Loyal mentioned, is how they handle his role in the film when it comes to release and promotion. I don't personally know how I feel about the issue. A part of me actually thinks they shouldn't drastically change the direction of advertising and above all, I don't think they should point it out. It will be as big a deal anyway.

I'm not going to say he was on his way to become some sort of legend because none of us know that but I don't think it's being doubted that his acting career was definitely the best it had ever been and looked to be getting better. He had finally established himself as a serious and respected (not to mention damn good) actor and was destined to growing commercial success with The Dark Knight. It's just so tragic.

I'm not commenting on cause of death since everything is speculation now but whether it was this or that probably won't matter that much to me. It's tragic any way you look at it. Kind of darkly ironic how his career was on a major upswing when his personal life had been going the opposite direction over the past year.

By any standard, a great loss.

They never did use Brandon Lee's death to promote the movie. Pretyt much the commercials were that STP song playing with Brandon Lee's name appearing and thats about it

Personally, I would like to see WB maintain the majority of their future marketing as if nothing happened. I think it would be disrespectful to Heath and his performance to kind of dumb down the darkness of the character in the marketing because of this.

The Crow set was just a disaster from whats reported that two stuntmen got hurt really badly. River Phoenix too at one time was supposed to play ERic Draven

Yeah the Crow was promoted as "The Crow" like they would have if he was still alive.

However, all the news magazine shows like ET etc had numerous reports about Lee's death and the film and hyped up the film that way.

One difference between Ledger and Lee - is that Lee died ON SET of The Crow - while Ledger died away from the TDK set.

So is the death reason already known?

WTH?!....

wow... RIP

Yeah, Heath's role in that is actually kind of ominous, the more I think of it

Robbie is the young and happy persona of Dylan before fame, drugs, and the media take all that free spirit away and make him bitter and depressed. Fame and drugs kills the happy Robbie persona of Dylan, just like it killed Heath...

That montage can represent a lot more than Dylan's life, it can represent the younger happy memories that any older, less happy person(Ledger including) once experienced.

I think TDK is a whole different thing then The Crow, I mean Brandon Lee died on set. Now if the Joker character did some how play a factor in this, (which I have to be skeptical about) then they're more warranted.

I'm skeptical about the whole Joker role leading to depression stuff too. I mean, Heath was an exceptional talent, but he never struck me as overly method. If anything, he always seemed level headed and detached from his on-screen persona.

this is nuts, I couldn't believe it.

Same day as oscar noms too, which definitely get bumped to page 2 now. But how is it possible for that to even happen? This is ridiculous.

I was really surprised when i heard about this today. I found it on a sports show of all things and they just happened to be talking about it in passing.

It's very unfortunate and sad because he was improving as an actor and we had TDK to look forward to and that he had a child and a ex-wife. It's all a bummer.

He just really never seemed like a happy guy to me. I didn't know if he was just quiet or being demure or something. My guess is that he had problems.

I would say stop promoting Joker now. Focus it on batman and the action scenes. I seriously feel like Ledger had become very nervous at the fact that everyone had high expectations from him and they were pimping his role to the nth degree that it could lead to dissapointments and what not. He probably use to take drugs to get sleep or something but in this case he took too much and well u know what happened.

I hope his performance is applauded by all and he wins tons of awards for his joker role. WB should send a $40-50 million paycheck to his family. I feel pity on his 1 year old baby and wife.

Oh and chris nolan better not think of recasting joker for a 3rd film.

That would change things then. Not good at all if thats the case.