How the Batman script was nearly lost

One of my favorite upgrades to the Batman franchise was the casting of Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon. 


I think Oldman really stole the show in Batman Begins, and he’s always been a wonderfully talented, left of center British actor who along with Michael Caine is a very welcome addition to Gotham City.

Now as regular TG readers know, we’ve written reams and reams about how paranoid Hollywood gets when it comes to upcoming blockbusters, and what lengths they’ll go to in preventing leaks.

This is where Gary Oldman probably had an enormous anxiety attack working on The Dark Knight Rises, because he misplaced his copy of the script, which would almost certainly have been leak Armageddon if it got out.

And indeed, as Oldman recently told the BBC, “I was in a panic for 20 minutes. I thought, ‘Where  the hell have I put it?’ It had my name on it. They would have killed me.” As Goldman continued, he had the script hidden between the mattress and the bed, “because I couldn’t scrunch it into the safe.”

In the same article, the BBC also discussed the security measures for the upcoming film Zero Dark Thirty, which tells the story about the hunt for Bin Laden, which is slated to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker). 

As actor Mark Strong recalled, you had to apply to read the script on your computer, and if you don’t check in regularly and read the script it automatically disappears. Strong also mentioned that if the computer detects you’re not reading the script after several minutes, the pages blur so you can’t view the text.

This is certainly a new one I’ve never heard of, I know all about locked codes on computers, printing them on red paper so they can’t be Xeroxed, and directors having the only copy of a script that you have to go to their office to read. CLearly, with the potential of something getting all over the ‘Net instantly, you can’t be too careful.