The Dark Knight Rises will feature over an hour of IMAX footage, plus new trailer in front of The Avengers!

April 23rd 2012, 12:46am

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

While THE AVENGERS is the current talk of the town as its release fast approaches and press have finally had a chance to see it (and the word is that it’s great), Christopher Nolan’s THE DARK KNIGHT RISES appears to be gearing up for a superhero marketing blitz of its own.

First of up, Chris Nolan has been out and about and talking to the press indirectly about his Bat trilogy capper (and more specifically, the craft of filmmaking itself). Last week the director gave an in-depth talk about how he approaches making films, as well as why IMAX is the shit and 3D is not. Now today, as Nolan spoke with the Wall Street Journal about the IMAX format, it’s been revealed that the THE DARK KNIGHT RISES will feature over an hour of IMAX footage. Wow!

“When Mr. Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ opens July 20, it will contain the most IMAX footage ever for a Hollywood feature, more than one hour’s worth. There were 40 minutes of such footage in 2008’s ‘The Dark Knight’—which set box-office records in its opening weekend.”

Nolan adds a little something to the IMAX naysayers, too:

“There was a huge irony that we were told it would be too difficult to shoot a Hollywood movie on IMAX when we had this gigantic camera department, grips, electric, hundreds of people working for us,” says the director, whose agreement to direct ‘The Dark Knight’ was contingent on Warner Bros. allowing him to shoot the film in IMAX. “These were cameras that had been to the top of Mount Everest, to the bottom of the ocean and into outer space, but people thought we couldn’t make a feature film. It was absurd.”

Meanwhile, Nolan Fans is reporting that the next full trailer for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES will be attached to THE AVENGERS (you can check out a screenshot of the exhibitor brief RIGHT HERE). And really, that’s a no-brainer for Warner Bros, who I’m expecting to really start bringing out the big guns after the release of Marvel’s superhero extravaganza.