Film News: Warner Bros. Launches ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Viral Marketing, Reveals Tom Hardy as Bane

CHICAGO – Warner Bros. on Friday launched the official Web site for “The Dark Knight Rises” at http://thedarkknightrises.warnerbros.com [18] with an all-black screen and mysterious, tribal-like chanting. That launch ignited an online fan frenzy that marks the official beginning to the film’s new viral marketing campaign.

Upon analyzing the official Web site’s sound spectrogram, we’ve discovered the words “The Fire Rises”! The Web site http://www.thefirerises.com [19] was registered eight days ago by DNStination and MarkMonitor Brand Protection.

A search on Twitter [20] shows fanboys asking questions galore about these new fire-rising words. An image link to another new Web site, http://www.thedarkknightrises.com/image.html [21], has appeared on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/thefirerises [22].

To help reveal a new image, fans have gone to that image link [21] and tweeted the following:

And bam! The collective work of Batman fans has yielded a big reward on TheDarkKnightRises.com: Bane! Bane is one of Batman’s more physically and intellectually powerful foes. Below is our first official look at Tom Hardy as Bane.

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The first official look at Tom Hardy as Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises”.
Image credit: TheDarkKnightRises.com [21]

Want to see big Bane? Click the official Bane image above for a high-res version or click here [23]! A recent photo of Tom Hardy with producer, director and writer Martin J. Thomas can be found below.

A recent photo of Tom Hardy (right) with producer, director and writer Martin J. Thomas.
Image credit: IMDb

From what we saw with “The Dark Knight [24]” prior to the film’s release, we can expect another exhaustive bout of enigmatic viral marketing from “The Dark Knight Rises”. Shrouded in the dark shadows of nothingness with this mysterious audio, that campaign begins today. Stay tuned for what’s certainly going to be another epic viral marketing ride!

“The Dark Knight Rises” will again star Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and Michael Caine as Alfred. The film also stars Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Juno Temple, Josh Pence, Diego Klattenhoff and Alon Aboutboul. Nestor Carbonell and Daniel Sunjata are currently rumored to be involved.

The film, which is again directed by Christopher Nolan, is scheduled for release on July 20, 2012. “The Dark Knight Rises” is written by David S. Goyer (story), Bob Kane (characters), Christopher Nolan (screenplay), Christopher Nolan (story) and Jonathan Nolan (screenplay) with original music from Hans Zimmer and cinematography by Wally Pfister.

[28]	By ADAM FENDELMAN [29] Publisher HollywoodChicago.com adam@hollywoodchicago.com [28]