How sweet the sound.

First, some background.

I think Eric Roberts is great in anything he does. In fact, when my friend Bob and I wrote a sitcom pilot many years ago, we created a character specifically for Eric Roberts. (He would have had a recurring guest-star role as the ex-fiancé of our Téa Leoni character. Our pitch letter said, “This man will be played, of course, by Eric Roberts.”)

And when my friends James and Dan — the Brothers Borgelt! — and I used to work out together in their parents’ garage, we’d follow our workouts by watching television, eating chips and drinking Cokes, thus negating any good we’d accomplished during the workout. Oh, well. Anyway, we would frequently watch syndicated reruns of The King of Queens, where we discovered what became our mutually favorite episode. It’s the one where the gang goes to play paint ball and they’re joined on the field by an overzealous, hilariously militaristic competitor played by none other than Mr. Eric Roberts in one of the funniest roles I’ve ever seen him do.

You can also catch him in a recurring role on NBC’s Heroes, which I never remember to watch.

Anyway.

The L.A. Daily News reports that Mr. Roberts has joined the cast of my most anticipated movie ever, The Dark Knight, as a mafia kingpin. (I bet he’s Sal Maroni! I bet he’s Sal Maroni! I bet he’s Sal Maroni!) This is fantastic news. Roberts rocks.

I mean, we’re lucky enough to live in a world where Christian Bale — the pinnacle of physical and emotional dedication to every role he takes — is Batman. BATMAN! And with every new cast announcement, this thing sounds even better.

Big thanks as always go to Bill “Jett” Ramey’s Batman on Film for posting the scoop, and hopefully Alfred will tell us all that joke he knows when The Dark Knight takes the theater near you under its electrically charged memory-cloth wing on July 18, 2008.

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True story

Eric’s daughter, Emma, is playing Nancy Drew in this summer’s movie about the famous sleuth.