Twilight Leads MTV Movie Awards Nominations

Vampire blockbuster Twilight and Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire will lead the charge at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards after scooping seven and six nominations, respectively.

The bloodsucking love story, based on the book by Stephenie Meyer, will compete for prizes including Best Movie, Best Female Performance for Kristen Stewart, and Breakthrough Performance Male for both Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner.

Slumdog Millionaire stars Freida Pinto and Dev Patel are also up for the Breakthrough Performance accolades, while the film will go up against Twilight, The Dark Knight, Iron Man and High School Musical 3: Senior Year in the Best Movie category.

Meanwhile, Anne Hathaway (Bride Wars), Angelina Jolie (Wanted) and Kate Winslet (The Reader) join Stewart in the Best Female Performance line-up, and Zac Efron (High School Musical 3), Shia Labeouf (Eagle Eye) and Robert Downey, Jr. (Tropic Thunder) will fight it out for the Best Male Performance title.

Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana: The Movie) and Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical 3) will go head-to-head for the Breakthrough Performance Female award, while Cyrus is also nominated for Best Song From a Movie for Hannah Montana.

Real-life Slumdog Millionaire lovebirds Patel and Pinto have also earned recognition in the Best Kiss category, alongside Twilight's Pattinson and Stewart, James Franco and Sean Penn for Milk, and Paul Rudd and Thomas Lennon in I Love You, Man.

The Dark Knight's Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger will battle it out for Best Fight alongside Seth Rogen, James Franco and Danny McBride for their scrap in Pineapple Express.

The Golden Popcorn prizes, nominated and voted for by MTV viewers, will be handed out in Los Angeles on May 31st.

The Dark Knight Breaks a Billion

It's not going to snag 11 Oscars, but The Dark Knight— Christian Bale and all—is nipping at Titanic's heels in the court of public opinion.

The 2008 blockbuster has surpassed $1 billion at the worldwide box office, Warner Bros. announced late Friday.

According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, the critically acclaimed Caped Crusader sequel—which actually could win eight Academy Awards on Sunday—is now in fourth place on the list of all-time box office grosses, behind only Titanic ($1.84 billion), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($1.12 billion) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($1.07 billion).

The Dark Knight is currently sitting pretty with $1.001 billion, while the fifth-place Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is way back there with $974.7 million.

$533.1 million of that billion-plus sum was grossed in U.S. theaters, while $468 million was raked in overseas.

Warner Bros.' news comes along with the announcement that The Dark Knight is also now the top-grossing 2-D IMAX release of all time, with $64.9 million grossed worldwide.

Ledger Fans Call for The Joker to be Retired

A group of Heath Ledger fans have demanded The Joker be retired from all future Batman movies as a mark of respect to the late star.

The tragic actor, who died from an accidental drug overdose in January 2008, looks set to land a posthumous Oscar for his portrayal of the comic book villain in The Dark Knight, and devotees insist no one could ever play The Joker better.

Fans are being invited to visit website TheUltimateJoker.com and add their names to a petition calling for movie studios to remove The Joker from future Batman movies.

The online petition launched last week, and already boasts almost 2,500 names.

Argentine fan Fer Barbella, one of the masterminds behind the site, tells CNN.com, "We are Batman fans from the comics and from the movies (sic). After we saw The Dark Knight, we thought this Joker was really the best. It deserves to be withdrawn from any Batman sequels."