Vermont goes Hollywood, part 2: Leahy in The Dark Knight (plus more interesting Dark Knight news as well)

First The Simpsons hold a movie premiere there, and now this: Vermont senator Patrick Leahy will appear in the Batman Begins sequel. Apparently he's done this before, as well, having cameoed as an extra in Batman and Robin. Fortunately for Senator Leahy (who apparently considers himself a Batman enthusiast), this will likely be a much better movie than the 1997 Joel Schumacher mess.

How do we know? Because Christopher Nolan, Jonah Nolan, David Goyer, Aaron "Harvey Dent" Eckhart, Gary "James Gordon" Oldman, and Christian "Bruce Wayne" Bale held court at Wizard World Chicago last week to discuss the film and show a montage of clips. No bootlegs of terrible handheld-camera footage of this montage with ultra-distorted audio of crowd noises have appeared on YouTube as of this writing, but there's a comprehensive recap on Wizard's site. Most noteworthy: the montage apparently concluded with a shot of a spinning 50 cent piece followed by a bartender saying "Dent! I thought you were dead!" Harvey's reply: "Half." For those completely unfamiliar with the Batman universe, that's a strong indication that Two-Face will indeed make an appearance in this film (as opposed to just Harvey Dent.) IMDB says Eric Roberts is going to be playing Salvatore "Boss" Maroni, so, when combined with the "I Believe In Harvey Dent" site, we can divine that the story may be mirroring the events as depicted in the epic Long Halloween series. Awesome.

Also at the Wizard World conference, someone floated the idea of uniting of the current film versions of Batman and Superman somehow, and while Goyer and the Nolans didn't seem particularly interested, Christian Bale sure did, to the delight of those attending. Perhaps this means he will, in fact, be in that long-discussed Justice League movie. Could be great news for that movie if that's the case.