THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Viral Campaign and Casting Update

Part of the charm of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies are the so-called Viral campaigns. "The Dark Knight" had the brilliant idea of mixing viral sites with global treasure hunts that rewarded fans with insight into the movie and free tickets to preview the movie before its release. No surprise that "The Dark Knight Rising", only two days after it started principal production, gets to continue this trend, with its official site:

•   "http://www.thedarkknightrises.com/" 
•  "http://thedarkknightrises.warnerbros.com/" 

Tom Hardy as Bane

For now the sites only contain a weird indistinct chant. Then there's also a little Twitter game that ends with a surprise picture of Tom Hardy as Bane (click on the picture to see it in full-size).To get to that you just have to tweet the hashtag #thefirerises and after some hocus-pocus you end up with the above picture made out of profile pics. The movie opens on July 20, 2012 and I'm sure we'll get plenty of viral marketing until that time, which will fill the gap before the first trailers surface.

Now, about the casting update. Three new names have been added to the cast, Matthew Modine ("Full Metal Jacket"), Tom Conti ("Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence") and 11-year-old Joey King ("Battle: Los Angeles"). For now, all that is known about this latest casting news is that Modine will play a character named Nixon. Any speculation at this time about this character is pretty much pointless until the director or anyone involved in the making of the movie makes an official statement.

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