page_title: The Dark Knight Rises
section_title: Marketing
hierarchical_section_title: The Dark Knight Rises / Marketing
caption_attribution_description: English: The Bat-Signal displayed on the Fifth Avenue Place in Pittsburgh during the filming of The Dark Knight Rises.
context_page_description: The Dark Knight Rises is a 2012 superhero film directed by Christopher Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Jonathan Nolan, and the story with David S. Goyer. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, it is the final installment in Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy, and the sequel to The Dark Knight. Christian Bale stars as Bruce Wayne / Batman, alongside Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Morgan Freeman. Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, the revolutionary Bane forces Bruce Wayne to resume his role as Batman and save Gotham City from nuclear destruction.
  Christopher Nolan was hesitant about returning to the series for a third film, but agreed after developing a story with his brother and Goyer that he felt would conclude the series on a satisfactory note. Nolan drew inspiration from Bane's comic book debut in the 1993 "Knightfall" storyline, the 1986 series The Dark Knight Returns, and the 1999 storyline "No Man's Land". Filming took place from May to November 2011 in locations including Jodhpur, London, Nottingham, Glasgow, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, and Pittsburgh.
context_section_description: The official website launched in May 2011, introducing a viral marketing campaign similar to the one used to promote The Dark Knight. The website streamed an encrypted audio file described by users as chanting. Users decrypted the audio to the Twitter hashtag, "#TheFireRises". Warner Bros. removed a pixel from the webpage for every tweet using the hashtag. The website revealed the first official image of Bane.
  In July 2011, a teaser trailer leaked online before its official release with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. The studio released the teaser three days after the leak. The trailer received mixed responses; Stephen Spencer Davis of Slate wrote it successfully built hype, while Kofi Outlaw of ScreenRant showed disappointment, claiming it was more of an "announcement trailer" than an actual teaser trailer. Outlaw criticized the quality, writing that a scene depicting Commissioner Gordon in a hospital bed was overly dramatic, had "hammy" dialogue, and was difficult to understand due to Gordon's labored breathing. Outlaw wrote that the sweeping shot of Gotham City had poor CGI and was too reminiscent of the Inception trailer. The theatrical trailer leaked online, like the teaser trailer, before being released the following week attached to theatrical prints of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Critics noted political undertones with dialogue foreshadowing the theme of income inequality and an "Occupy Gotham" campaign within the world of the story. Receiving more than 12.5 million views in the first 24 hours after its release, the trailer set the record for most combined downloads from iTunes, beating the previous record held by The Avengers. However, the second trailer for The Avengers again set the record with 13.7 million downloads. Warner Bros. attached a second theatrical trailer for The Dark Knight Rises to theatrical prints of The Avengers. An "unnamed" Warner Brothers executive clarified that "We see this placement as a good strategic decision. We always want our trailers to be seen with films that people want to see—and a lot of people will be going to The Avengers!" The executive also commented that the trailer will "provide the best potential exposure for TDKR." Warner Bros. released the trailer online on April 30, 2012, approximately four days before they attached it to theatrical prints of The Avengers.
  Continuing a method used with The Dark Knight whereby the opening sequence of the film was attached to IMAX prints of I Am Legend seven months before release, a six-minute prologue of The Dark Knight Rises was attached to 70mm IMAX prints of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, again approximately seven months before release. Critical reaction to the prologue was positive, with one critic commenting that "no one gets to make a film on this kind of scale anymore. Except for Christopher Nolan," though a round-up of reviews highlighted the way many critics found Tom Hardy's dialogue very difficult to hear. Addressing the issue in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Nolan said "I think when people see the film, things will come into focus. Bane is very complex and very interesting and when people see the finished film people will be very entertained by him."
  Viral marketing campaigns for the film continued as magazine companies Empire and Wired received "CIA documents" concerning a "Dr. Leonid Pavel", with its mugshot connected to actor Alon Abutbul. According to the first document, Pavel is a missing Russian nuclear physicist, while the second document appears to be an edited transcript of a conversation discussing the handover of Dr. Pavel to the CIA by Georgian separatists, but with most of the conversation redacted. These were later shown to be plot elements of the six-minute prologue. The official Twitter account later linked to another censored document, this time, referencing "Operation Early Bird". A website of the same name was discovered, revealing a countdown timer. When the countdown finished, the site presented a map showing all available theaters that would be screening the fil
caption: The bat-signal projected against the Fifth Avenue Place during filming in Pittsburgh.
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