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With the highly-anticipated July 18th release of The Dark Knight on the horizon, record reports of ticket pre-sales and of course the Oscar buzz around the late Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker, Ask.com retired to our own bat cave (aka our search banks) to reveal searching habits around this soon-to-be box office hit. Just as we suspected, users are conducting searches on everything from actors who have played Batman to directors to Heath Ledger himself...

Four mega-stars have played the role of Gotham City’s "Caped Crusader" over the years, and according to our search banks, George Clooney from Batman and Robin reins Bruce Wayne supreme with over 67% of searches followed by Christian Bale (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight), Val Kilmer (Batman Forever) and finally, Michael Keaton (Batman, Batman Returns).

When it comes to villains, the clear winner is The Joker - - most likely attributed to Heath Ledger, who is also one of the top recent searches on Ask.com.

As far as directors go, data from Ask.com shows that Tim Burton is the favorite garnering 98% of searches, followed by Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight and finally Joel Schumacher.

In terms of popularity by movie title, The Dark Knight had almost three times the number of searches than runner-up Batman. Here is the full ranked list:

1. The Dark Knight

2. Batman

3. Batman Begins

4. Batman and Robin

5. Batman Forever

6. Batman Returns