Article from: The Daily Telegraph
November 13, 2008 12:00am
CAPED-crusader Batman is being sued.
It's not the new plot for the next Batman movie, after the awesome success of The Dark Knight, but legal action being taken by Batman, an oil producing city in Turkey's southeast.
Huseyin Kalkan, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party mayor of Batman, is suing Christopher Nolan and Warner Brothers, for royalties from The Dark Knight.
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Kalkan accuses the film's producers of using the city's name without permission, Variety magazine reports.
"There is only one Batman in the world," Kalkan said, denying it was April 1 in his city.
"The American producers used the name of our city without informing us."
Why it has taken so long for the city of Batman to contact lawyers, when The Dark Knight is the sixth film since Warner bros bought the rights from DC Comics in April 1979.
In fact, Batman first appeared as a comicbook character in 1939 and the Batman TV series started in 1966.
One wonders if the fact that The Dark Knight has hit $1.51 billion at the box office, has stirred the city of Batman into action.
The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film's success has had on the city's inhabitants.
Former natives of Batman are also said to have encountered obstacles when attempting to register their businesses abroad.
The mayor is working on gathering evidence he claims will show that the city of Batman predates the 1939 debut of Bob Kane's superhero in DC Comics.
"We are only aware of this claim via press reports and have not seen any actual legal action," a Warner Bros. rep said in a statement.
While the town of Batman has suddenly shown great interest in the property, there's no evidence that the citizenry has ever shown much loyalty to the Caped Crusader -- not even on Halloween.
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sonofabitch....
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