The Dark Knight is officially a box office hit.

Breaking news from Hollywood is that Heath Ledger, actor famous from his role in Brokeback Mountain and many others, has been found dead in his appartment. Another tragic incident where the pressure of public expectation seems to have driven one more into the unknown.

Right now as a reader of my blog you are probably wondering why I am mentioning this, as it is highly irrelevant to the topics of which I normally focus on. The answer is twofold. First of all I really liked Ledger as an actor. He gave us some excellent performances in movies such as The Patriot, The Four Feathers and others.

But as the headline says, this really is about his latest work, the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight. I have previously explored some marketing techniques used in promoting The Dark Knight, and I simply wanted to point out how unforeseen things like these can affect our work.

Now if it was up to me, this movie would be pulled out of respect for Ledger and his close ones. Unfortunately, and this is the flipside of capitalism, we live in a world ruled by money, and that is unlikely to be the case. The most likely scenario is that this movie will be remembered as the last performance of someone who was dragged out of our world well before his time. Due to the nature of Ledger’s role, I won’t be surprised if this movie in a couple of years stands as somewhat of a cult symbol in rememberance of him.

I for one will still go see the movie, most likely with many others who never actually planned to. And I also still look forward to seeing Ledger’s intepretation of The Joker. I’m still convinced it will be awesome, and knowing myself, I will probably remember it just that much better because of what happened today.

In closing I would just like to extend my condolences to all of those who knew and cared about Heath Ledger. I didn’t, but he did seem like a great guy from what I could tell. Rest in peace.