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The marketing strategy for director Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises in the past month can be summed up with photos, posters, more posters, and more photos.
There's less than two months left before the sequel is released, and Warner Bros.' promotion has started making it into people's homes. Last week, two TV spots arrived online, and a third TV spot has followed, possibly signaling an endless stream of spots ahead in the coming weeks.
Even so, there's still plenty of mystery surrounding Nolan's third and final installment in his Batman trilogy. The latest spot won't exactly tell you what you may already know: that Batman (Christian Bale) will have his hands full with Bane (Tom Hardy) destroying Gotham and Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) being either an ally or yet another thorn in Batman's side. However, there is a special surprise for The Dark Knight junkies. As Comic Book Movie points out, the spot includes a brief look at Batman's cowl and and assorted utilities in a special cage from his underground lair, footage that was already used in an IMAX promo for the 2008 sequel but that didn't end up in the final product. See if you can spot it.
watch the TV spot >> Posted 05.29.12 by Ryan -
Talk about upping the ante! We couldn't have been any less impressed with the new poster for The Dark Knight Rises that was released earlier this week, but it appears it was only a forerunner of the good things to come. Almost immediately after the "fiery redux" poster hit the 'net, three visually striking (and wet) new character posters popped up online. Now, four epic banner posters/billboards have also been released and they depict no less than all-out war between Batman (Christian Bale), the Gotham City Police Department, and Bane's (Tom Hardy) army, with Catwoman's (Anne Hathaway) allegiance — She's riding Batman's Bat-pod, but is it a loner or did the infamous cat burglar swipe it? — still in question.
check out the new posters >> Posted 05.25.12 by BrentJS -
So far, the cast of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises has been pretty good about keeping mum on the movie's script, not revealing any significant plot details or spoilers. Up until now the biggest spoilers have come from leaked set photos, but when Tom Hardy was asked what it was like working with Gary Oldman on three projects (The Dark Knight Rises, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and this summer's Lawless), he may have accidentally revealed a key plot point from the movie.
Hardy's Potential Spoiler and 3 new U.K. character posters >> Posted 05.22.12 by Chris -
OK, we're not going to lie; we were a tad disappointed with yesterday's "new" poster for The Dark Knight Rises, which more or less was a knockoff of the movie's first poster (this clever GIF shows how little work went into creating the new poster).
But today the movie released something via Yahoo! that really has us panting — three new character posters featuring Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), Bane (Tom Hardy), and Batman (Christian Bale). Each gorgeous poster shows the character walking through pelting black rain with the word "RISE" above them.
check out the full-size posters and learn more about Bane's mask >> Posted 05.22.12 by Chris -
If there's any similarity between The Dark Knight Rises' villain Bane (Tom Hardy) and The Dark Knight's Joker (played by the late Heath Ledger), it's that director Christopher Nolan has taken two extreme comic book characters and put them into a fictional world that Nolan has tried to make as true to reality as a story can be when it follows a man who dresses up like a bat to fight crime. While Bane is certainly less iconic than the Joker, Hardy told Entertainment Weekly, he knew he and Nolan knew that the character represented "a risk" for several reasons.
There were two doors we could walk through. We could play a very straightforward villain or we could go through this very quirky door, which is totally justified by the text but may seem very, very stupid. It’s a risk, because we could be laughed at—or it could be very fresh and exciting.
more from Hardy >> Posted 04.16.12 by Ryan -
Easily one of the most anticipated movies of 2012 has to be director Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, which, for the next week anyway, will grace the cover of Entertainment Weekly.
The Dark Knight Rises is set eight years after the events of 2008's The Dark Knight, and will see Batman (Christian Bale) go up against the villain Bane (Tom Hardy), who was recently introduced to IMAX audiences in an extended prologue. Little else is known about the movie's plot, though Bale does admit that making the sequel was not without its pressures.
I can tell you the truth because I’m done with it: I felt immense pressure. And I think it’s a good pressure, because you owe it to the films — and the people’s expectations — to make great work.
check out the new photos >> Posted 01.13.12 by Ryan -
The Batman movies of the late '80s and '90s took a traditional approach to choosing villains — starting with Joker in 1989's Batman, before moving on to Penguin, Catwoman, and others. Director Christopher Nolan, on the other hand, has used more obscure villains for his Batman movies. He brought in Ra's al Ghul and Scarecrow for 2005's Batman Begins before using more traditional villains like the Joker and Two-Face in 2008's The Dark Knight.
For Nolan's third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, the director has focused his attention on the villain Bane (Tom Hardy), who is reportedly the centerpiece of the seven-minute prologue to The Dark Knight Rises which will screen before select 70mm IMAX showings of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol starting Dec. 16th. While Bane did appear in the woeful Batman & Robin, and is well-known to comic book fans for breaking Batman's back in the "Knightfall" story arc, Nolan admitted to the LA Times that he had little knowledge of the character before starting work on the sequel.
read nolan's comments >> Posted 12.13.11 by Ryan -
Warner Bros. has released a new teaser poster for director Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, as anticipation is rising (ahem) over the extended prologue to the movie that will accompany the release of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol on Dec. 16th in select 70mm IMAX prints.
Earlier this week, several outlets were shown the seven-minute prologue, which centers on villain Bane (Tom Hardy, just like the poster, which claims "the Legend Ends" and depicts Bane walking away from Batman's cowl. Reportedly, the prologue takes place mostly in an airplane, and features Aidan Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones) in an unspecified role. After the screening of the prologue, Nolan told EW that he was excited for the public to see the footage.
I am excited about it. I’m only nervous about it in that the rest of the film isn’t finished yet, so we’re still in the evolving creative process. I wouldn’t want the reactions to skew that. We try to work in a vacuum a little bit. It’s always different in the editing room. There’s a lot of discovery and a long process of rediscovery.
read nolan's comment and see the full poster >> Posted 12.10.11 by Ryan -
Lately, it seems that the cast of any movie directed by Christopher Nolan are sworn to silence. This means that, like the cloud of secrecy that surrounded Inception, no one in the cast of the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises will reveal anything. That didn't stop MTV from asking Gary Oldman if the highly-anticipated sequel is indeed the last chapter as Nolan has claimed. Oldman took a few seconds of silence before responding.
My silence isn't saying — no, no, no, don't read, don't read into it. My silence is — I'm thinking about how I can answer it [the question]. I was at Comic-Con, and someone said to me from the audience, "When's the next Batman? This was years ago, right? And I said, "Oh, I don't know, next year, it's going to be at the end of the year." And it went 'round the world.
Oldman said that in 2009, but also added: "But you didn't hear that from me," which clearly wasn't adhered to, so his reticence about responding is understandable. Eventually, he did compose himself enough to answer the question.
Bane a "smart" decision by Nolan >> Posted 11.23.11 by Ryan -
Production recently wrapped on director Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises , which is great news for fans anxious to see a new trailer or other footage from the shoot, but not so great news for those photographers that supplied the online community with a variety of "spy" pics and videos. Ultimately, the biggest take-away was that Batman (Christian Bale) and Bane (Tom Hardy) engage in a daytime fistfight, which was pretty much expected ever since Bane was revealed as the movie's villain. What else Nolan has in store is still a (mostly) well-kept secret, but the typically-guarded director has finally offered some new details.
In the most recent issue of Empire, which has both Bale and Hardy on alternating covers, Nolan opened up a bit about the plot of The Dark Knight Rises and revealed that the sequel will take place "eight years" after the previous installment.
Hardy describes Bane as "brutal" >> Posted 11.21.11 by Ryan