Electronic Arts' Pandemic Studio was working on a Dark Knight game, according to an AP report. Gary Oldman, who plays James Gordon in the film, recently commented that he had recorded dialog for the game and had seen snippets of it in action. The licensed movie game was apparently canned due to quality concerns, the controversy surrounding star Heath Ledger's death, and less than optimistic sales projections.

Due to the reception that the Dark Knight film has gotten, however, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter believes a corresponding game released simultaneously might have sold 4 million units. That sales total would have racked up $100 million, with $70 million going to Electronic Arts and $30 million going to Warner Bros. These numbers assume a proportionate hit to other movie based games, such as Transformers, Spider-Man 3 and Iron Man, which have sold 2.6 million, 2.1 million and 697,000 units respectively, according to the NPD.

"I think publishers have concluded the only games that work are the surefire $500 million box office kind of games like Spider-Man and Shrek," said Pachter to the AP. "The Transformers game really surprised people how well it did, but the movie was big. I don't think they expected The Dark Knight movie to be this big."

EA's confidence in a Dark Knight game may have been rattled by the recent performance of some of their other DC Comic movie games. Superman Returns (which was delayed until the movie's DVD release) sold 705,000 copies and the Batman Begins game sold just 587,000 copies.