Holy Gratuitous Lawsuit, Batman!
The mayor of an actual Turkish city called Batman announced over the weekend he plans to sue director Chris Nolan over unauthorized use of the "Batman" name. Apparently, Batman has a problem with unsolved murders and a high suicide rate among women. And it’s all Nolan’s fault. Not DC Comics, Warner Brothers or the estate of Bob Kane. Makes perfect sense to me.
"The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us … There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.” Mayor Hüseyin Kalkan, speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News and the Economic Review, said last year foreign media picked up on Batman and the city’s increasing suicide rates among women. He said a columnist asked why Batman’s mayor did not sue the movie Batman for royalties while struggling with economic problems. “We found this criticism right and started to look for legal possibilities of a case like that,” he said.
O.O
Good luck with that one - It's been a word in the English language for several hundred years, and as a trademark it belongs to DC / Warner etc., not Nolan. I'm sure that the nice lawyers will explain it to them at inordinate expensive length...