A brand new TV spot for The Dark Knight Rises focuses on the lighter moments in the film, and also reveals that Reno 911! star Thomas Lennon -- yes, Lt. Dangle himself -- is in the film. Check it out:
The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.
We visited the Pittsburgh set of The Dark Knight Rises one relentlessly hot day last summer. What follows is the second and final part of our chats with the cast and crew behind Christopher Nolan's swan song to the Batman film franchise. (Part 1 of our set visit can be found HERE).
Be advised that there are SOME SPOILERS ahead ...
Special effects supervisor Chris Corbould on the film's biggest challenge: "I think it was getting all our head around the fact that we had to top Dark Knight. Getting all the creative juice flowing to format this film so we've got a great film for everybody so they won't be disappointed. There were a lot of very. very intense meetings going on about story line, what we could do, how we could change things, and how we could change digital effects. It was a very, very intense period, generally shorter than what we're used to. In Batman Begins, when we were building the tumblers, I think we had eight months to build them. Probably the Batpod was bit shorter, seven months. (Nolan) is very into his machines. He knows every single bit of them. He's deigned it with the Batpod and the Batmobile we started with a model this big, and what we built was almost identical to the little, plastic model. Every step of the way, whether it be the size of the tires, the color of the black-- I didn't even know there were so many shades of black. The Batmobile was like four different shades. To me, they look black, but he sees some difference in them. He's very meticulous in every single vehicle, gadget, costume... He's very, very intimate with that."
Costume designer Lindy Hemming on Catwoman's costume: "It's very, very simple. And she's the kind of female version of Batman in a way. She's someone who's produced a suit which has a technology of its own which is in the fabric. She has her own functional items which she needs. She has a custom-made belt with tiny -- everything to do with burglary, looking at jewelry. She has a belt which is full of those things all miniaturized for that. The tech in the fabric is our own creative tech. It's not a special fabric. We made it ourselves by screen printing the under-layer and putting a very thin, silky over layer on. We wanted to keep her very, very light, very creeping-about. Not robotic or anything like that. And we didn't want it to be rubbery or shiny like the previous Michele Pfeiffer suit. We didn't want it to have any implication of being a bondage or sex kind of suit. It was to be something functional but you wear when you're trying to creep about in the dark, not be visible."
Hemming on making Catwoman's "ears" work: "Christopher Nolan and I were trying to work out how we were going to keep it modern and trendy and cool. ... We said, 'What is forming these ears? What's the logic to have the ears?' And the logic you will see behind the ears is that when the goggles go up, the shape of the goggles makes the ears. And we think it's really cool. We went through so many incarnations of how to make it happen. I don't know how many of you have seen jewelers, when they've got the jeweler loupe. Or when you go to the dentist -- that was my inspiration -- and they're looking at you, and they've got the thing that looks into your mouth. They've got magnification and everything. Both of us looking at different versions of that, and then we employed the sunglasses. ... We started making our version of night-vision goggles-- or magnification goggles when she's doing her cat burgling. We made it so that when it goes up, it falls into ears."
Hemming on Bane: "When you look at the comic version of Bane, he's this massive man. He wearing a wrestling suit, and it's a bit difficult to imagine how you could translate that into a Chris Nolan film because everyone is meant to have a real background and come from real story. So with Bane you can see him with his mercenary men and you can know in the story where he's come from and why he is like he is. Following that route, he's much more armored with a nod toward the straps of the wrestling suit he started with. He's got an injury which is why in the comic he has to have the venom. In our story, it's slightly different, but it's the same kind of idea. Using all those things, and using the fact that he doesn't come form the same technology as Batman -- he doesn't have Fox making all these things for him -- his stuff has been made on-the-move, over the mountains of the world, maybe in training camps. He's the guy who's had his stuff made by different people along the way. So there is a sort of slightly clunky element to him, and that's part of his story. But at the same time, the way he's directed in the film, is the menace within him because he's a wrestler. And he's also an older character. He's not a young kid. He's an older man who, as you'll see in the film, you'll know he's been around for a long time. The reason he looks like he looks is he's much more a warrior, mercenary kind of man."
On Bane's mask: "We wanted it to be like an animal. I wanted it to have an animalistic feeling, and I looked at things like silverback gorillas and snarling teeth, fangs coming up and fangs coming down. You're getting sort of what it is. ... We all decided early on that if you have a film where two people are wearing a mask -- we didn't want when they're fighting together, Batman and him, to look the same. And Bane's mask in the comic is this sort of black, wrestling mask thing, and you can't see any of his face. So my first thing was animals, and my second thing with Chris-- and it was his idea really-- is how on Earth can we make this man not look the same as the other man when they're fighting? So just between working, drawing, looking at reference pictures of animals and everything, we came up with the idea that the [mask is partially covering his face] so the mask is functioning. The painkillers are being fed down into here, and it could be that his face is damaged. We don't know. And I think we didn't mind about the fact that it would limit his vocal abilities because it's a film, and we can put that in or do whatever we want with that afterwards. But it seemed to make him more menacing [for] this bit to be hidden."
Actor Nestor Carbonell on the mayor's stance in TDKR: "The mayor definitely feels that he is not for a vigilante coming in here and solving crime this way. It's just not the way that he envisions things. I think that there is an ego element to him. This is a man who wants to restore law and order. This is a man who is very much for putting out legislation where he has the freedom to really go after criminals, to really pursue them in a hard way. You know, I'm not saying he's going to violate civil liberties, but this is a man who is very much tough on crime and takes it upon himself to take on criminals headfirst. And no, he does not appreciate someone like The Batman to come in here and solve problems. ... With a man like this, from his point of view, he's absolutely against corruption, and if he's done anything within his teneur as mayor, it's to fight the mob head-on. Now, we have these lunatics running around doing their own thing, and they're essentially terrorists. That's a different thing altogether, but in terms of handling organized crime, this is a man who's dead set against that existing. He makes it part of his campaign."
Stunt coordinator Tom Struthers on working with Christian Bale and Tom Hardy: "Christian is very, very disciplined. Christian is one of these people where you can show him something once or twice, walk him through it, and after two or three days, a major fight sequence which has maybe 200 different moves in it-- a very, very long fight when we're filming one-- he picks it up very, very well. So does Tom I must say. Both are very easy to work with. They both pick up choreography, of the fighting, of the style. And then Chris will insert the drama that he wants and the moods and feels and the flow of it. ... They have a good chemistry because they're both physical actors, and they're both physical people that both get out and do stuff. It just makes a big difference when we're putting it on the screen because that bit flows, and then they can concentrate on the drama that they need to give to the director. And they're easy people to work with."
TDKR co-producer Jordan Goldberg: "It's amazing how much it's changed since we shot The Dark Knight. With The Dark Knight, it was usually about a day before things got on the Internet. Now it's like within two minutes it's on the Internet. I think it's fun because on one hand, it's a love/hate thing because people are really that enthusiastic about the project that they want to be the first person to post something out there, which is cool. And ultimately, the comments I've seen so far have been very positive. But you're very wary about it sometimes because you don't want to ruin the surprise. When people are filming you filming a movie, you don't want to ruin the illusion of the film. All these movies, they're kind of like magic tricks. You don't want to have people see behind the scenes because we want [to conceal] tricks."
The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.
Ready for another round of wall-to-wall packed movie theaters? New pre-release tracking predicts Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises could very likely surpass the $158.4 million opening of The Dark Knight, which had the biggest three-day domestic debut of all time when it opened.
Rises will be hitting theaters on July 20, the same debut weekend as The Dark Knight in 2008. To this day, TDK remains the top domestic opener in terms of 2D feature films. Since then, two 3D pics -- this summer's The Avengers and last year's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 -- have taken the No. 1 and No. 2 spots with $207.4 million and $169.2 million, respectively.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, TDKR's overall tracking numbers come close to The Avengers,' but the latter had an added boost of 3D ticket sales. However, Nolan's final Bat-chapter will also screen in several hundred IMAX theaters, which charge at a premium. (Over an hour of the movie was shot using IMAX cameras.) What's more, the film clocks in at 164 minutes -- 21 minutes more than The Avengers and 12 more than The Dark Knight.
Females are reportedly less interested in seeing The Dark Knight Rises than The Avengers, but Warner Bros. still has two weeks to court this demo.
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While doing press for the impending release of The Dark Knight Rises, director Christopher Nolan was asked if he was involved with Warner Bros.' planned Justice League of America movie.
"No, none at all," Nolan said, according to Entertainment Weekly. "We’re finished with all we’re doing with Batman. This is the end of our take on this character. ... I’ve got no plans to do anything more, and certainly, no involvement with any Justice League project."
This lack of any future involvement with Batman movies also extends to any potential reboot of the character, which contradicts past reports that he would essentially godfather the franchise's future.
"Obviously, Warners will have to decide in the future what they’re going to do with him," said Nolan, adding that he and his team have told the Batman story they wanted to tell and the character will live on for future filmmakers to interpret.
Check out this set of new, hi-res images from The Dark Knight Rises via Warner Bros.:
The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.
Warner Bros. will release The Dark Knight Rises on even more screens overseas than it did The Dark Knight.
Variety reports that the studio will roll out TDKR on 15,000 international screens starting July 20, nearly 4000 more than The Dark Knight was on back in 2008. The reason for this is that, unlike blockbusters such as The Avengers and the Harry Potter films, The Dark Knight made most of its fortune domestically rather than from abroad. The Dark Knight may rank 4th on the all-time domestic box office list, but it's only in 35th place on the international all-time hit list.
The Dark Knight Rises has a couple of big factors, though, that will likely prevent it from making Avengers-sized numbers abroad. First, the film has a 2 hour, 45 minute running time, which limits the number of times a day a movie can be shown (hence upping the screen count). Also, Batman simply has more appeal domestically than he does internationally given the grosses for all the Batman movies to date, not just the Nolan ones.
Check out the latest international TV spot for The Dark Knight Rises, featuring more snappy dialogue from Lucius Fox and shots of The Bat:
The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.
Can't wait to see The Dark Knight Rises? Well, we've got good news for you. Warner Bros. tweeted today that tickets for the final Christopher Nolan-directed Batman film go on sale this Monday, June 11! Tickets will be available for both standard and IMAX screenings.
Furthermore, AMC Theatres reveals that The Dark Knight Rises has an epic running time of 2 hours and 45 minutes. The theater chain will also host a marathon of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises starting July 19. (TDKR opens July 20.) Tickets for the marathon go on sale at AMC Theatres at 12:00pm EDT on June 11.
Director Christopher Nolan was initially reluctant to include Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. So what prompted the change of heart?
In an interview with Empire (pointed out via /Film and CBM, Nolan credits his brother and TDKR co-screenwriter Jonathan "Jonah" Nolan with helping him see the value of including the feline fatale. "I was nervous about how she would fit into our world. But Jonah was very much convinced that there would be a great way to do it and eventually turned me around," said Nolan. "Once I got my head around the idea of looking at that character through the prism of our films, saying, 'Who could that person be in real-life?' we figured it out. She's a bit of a con-woman, something of a grifter. A hard-edged kind of criminal."
Jonathan Nolan added, "Chris often comes from a position of, 'Why should we do this?' You know, presumed guilty. But I said, 'What we're endeavouring to do here is tell a complete take on the Batman mythos'. And a complete take of the Batman mythos without the character for me was sacrilegious. You've gotta gave her, because she has a delicious greyness to her that helps define who Batman is. She keeps wavering on this line of, 'Is she a good guy or a bad guy?' Well, she's kind of neither. And that's why, to me, that relationship and that character only enhances the universe - and the Batman character." He also said that "Anne Hathaway threatens to steal the show."
And what about the much-hyped secret ending of The Dark Knight Rises?
David Goyer, who co-plotted the Batman trilogy with the Brothers Nolan, said the final scene of The Dark Knight Rises is "completely unchanged" from the one the filmmakers envisioned years earlier at the start of the franchise's reboot. "We both knew in our hearts that we were onto something special. I have to tell you, having finally seen everything strung together a little while ago and seeing that scene, I got a complete lump in my throat."
