Tuesday Link-a-Mania

Dark Knight Poised to Break Box Officer Barrier
It looks likely that sometime this week Dark Knight will become the fourth film in worldwide box office history to break the $1 billion barrier. According to Box Office Guru the Batman Begins sequel has currently taken $991.9 million internationally, and is still on release in enough territories worldwide to potentially take it past the milestone $1 billion this week, joining Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest in this elite club. With Warners also planning to re-release Dark Knight early next year in an Oscars-reminding push, it may eventually pass the accumulated worldwide box office for Pirates II ($1,006.2 million) and Lord of the Rings II ($1,119.1 million) but is unlikely to challenge Titanic’s crown (a massive $1,842.9 million). But hey, those number twos are certainly not vanishing down the U-bend these days.

Tim Kring to Simplify Heroes
Tim Kring has assured NBC bosses that he intends to focus on simplifying the storytelling on Heroes after falling rating and criticism from press and fans that the show has become needlessly complex in its third season, reports Variety . The report says the show will "get back to its comicbookish good versus evil themes and to emphasise character development more than plot twists.” On the plus side, Heroes remains NBC’s top rated drama, so you'd assume the network will be more eager to concentrate on getting it back on course rather than cancelling it.

International Space Effort Defies Gravity
The BBC has teamed up with the US Fox network and TV channel in Germany and Canada for a 13-episode drama about astronauts in the near future called Defying Gravity. According to The Hollywood Reporter "eight astronauts from five countries who take on a mysterious six-year mission through the solar system." It is apparently loosely based on the BBC series Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets, which was written and directed by Ultraviolet and Apparitions creator Joe Ahearne.

Origin of the Apes
According to CHUD Fox is considering another stab at resurrecting the Planet of the Apes franchise on film. But it won’t be yet another remake of the original film (though lord knows we need one to wipe the Tim Burton effort from our minds) but rather a re-imagining of the fourth film from the original series, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. That’s the one that shows the beginnings of the Simian revolution which man being overthrown by apes. However, CHUD reckons the time paradox plot element (it's an Ape from the future who comes back in time to instigate the revolution) will be left out.

More Webisodes from Whedon?
Joss Whedon tells Vice that he’s interested in producing more material the Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog format of straight-to-the-web exclusives: "I want to pursue more and see what else I can do in that format.” He also talks about Dollhouse, Buffy season eight and Wonder Woman in a decent little interview ruined by completely gratuitous swearing (from the article writer, not Joss). It’s not big and it's not clever!