The Dark Knight tops weekend again

Bruce Wayne made like Bruce Jenner this weekend, as Batman took home the boxoffice gold yet again.

Sony's stoner comedy "Pineapple Express" couldn't cop the session's top berth, despite a heady $40.5 million in estimated domestic grosses since bowing Wednesday. Midweek binging sapped its Friday-Sunday strength, and the Seth Rogen-James Franco starrer had to settle for a silver medal with $22.4 million over a weekend seemingly influenced by Olympics telecasts.

The R-rated laffer's lighter-than-expected weekend tally allowed Warner Bros.' "The Dark Knight" to top domestic rankings for an incredible fourth straight frame, with the Batman sequel fetching another $26 million to pump cume to $441.5 million. More…

Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne and Batman: A billionaire dedicated to protecting Gotham City from the criminal underworld. Bale said he was confident in his choice to return in the role because of the positive response to his performance in Batman Begins. He trained in the Keysi Fighting Method, and performed many of his own stunts, but did not gain as much muscle as in the previous film because the new Batsuit allowed him to move with more agility.

The actor described Batman's dilemma as whether "something that has an end. Can he quit and have an ordinary life? The kind of manic intensity someone has to have to maintain the passion and the anger that they felt as a child, takes an effort after awhile, to keep doing that. At some point, you have to exorcise your demons." He added, "Now you have not just a young man in pain attempting to find some kind of an answer, you have somebody who actually has power, who is burdened by that power, and is having to recognize the difference between attaining that power and holding on to it." Bale felt that, because Batman's personality was strongly established in the first film, it was unlikely his character would be overshadowed by the villains, stating: "I have no problem with competing with someone else. And that's going to make a better movie."

Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth: Bruce Wayne's trusted butler and advisor who tends to Wayne's penthouse. His supply of useful advice to Wayne and his likeness to a fatherly figure to him has led to him being labelled as "Batman's batman".

Heath Ledger as The Joker: Heath Ledger described the Joker as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy". Nolan had wanted to work with Ledger on a number of projects in the past, but had been unable to do so. When Ledger saw Batman Begins, he realized a way to make the character work consistent with the film's tone, and Nolan agreed with his anarchic interpretation. To prepare for the role, Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character's posture, voice, and personality, and kept a diary, in which he recorded the Joker's thoughts and feelings. While he initially found it difficult, Ledger eventually generated a voice unlike that of Jack Nicholson's character in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film. He was also given Batman: The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, which he "really tried to read and put it down". Ledger also cited A Clockwork Orange and Sid Vicious as "a very early starting point for Christian and I. But we kind of flew far away from that pretty quickly and into another world altogether." "There’s a bit of everything in him. There’s nothing that consistent," Ledger said, adding that "There are a few more surprises to him." Before Ledger was confirmed to play the Joker in July 2006, Paul Bettany, Steve Carell, and Robin Williams publicly expressed interest in the role.

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