It has been three years in the making but production has finally begun on Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final Batman movie for the team behind Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Cameras officially began rolling on the new Batman movie in Jodphur, India on May 6th, 2011 and production will continue in India through the month of May before returning to the United States.
Pittsburgh will be the stand in for Gotham City this time; Chicago had hosted both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Back for his third go around as Batman and Bruce Wayne and coming off winning an Academy Award for his stirring portrayal of Dickie Ward in The Fighter is of course, Christian Bale.
Joining Bale for The Dark Knight Rises is an all star cast that includes Joseph Gordon Levitt as John Blake, a Gotham City Beat Cop who may or may not have a past connection to the Joker and Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, a board member at Wayne Enterprises and rumored love interest for Bruce Wayne.
As for the more famous characters from the Batman universe, Academy Award nominee Anne Hathaway will play Selina Kyle aka Catwoman and Tom Hardy takes on the role of Bane, a killer born in a prison in the Caribbean and given super powers via the use of a drug called Venom.
The Dark Knight Rises is not being shot in 3D but Nolan will employ IMAX cameras more often than he did in The Dark Knight in hopes of giving the film a unique look. Cinematographer Wally Pfister had expressed interest in shooting all of The Dark Knight Rises with the IMAX camera but the camera’s operating systems are too loud for dialogue scenes.
The Dark Knight Rises is scheduled to hit theaters July 20th, 2012.
