At long last, a viral campaign, similar to the one that made The Dark Knight such a hit, has begun for The Dark Knight Rises.

2008, which seems like such a long time ago now, saw the release of the greatest Batman film to date. A third instalment was quickly agreed upon and everyone assumed filming would start straight away.

However, Christopher Nolan had a different plan. He went off to make a little know film, that did alright, called Inception. After the films success, he turned his attention back to Batman.

Now the real games begin. A game of cat and mouse between the die hard Batman fans and Warner Brothers as they push forward into, what is already, a quite astonishing viral idea and campaign.

Filming has official begun on the new film, which will reportedly cover three different continents, from India to New York with a few stop offs in between.

With filming underway, Warner Brothers released the first official photo of Tom Hardy as the fearsome Bane. The photo shows the bulked up villain, back to the camera, half bathed in shadow and half in light. He is also wearing a pretty freaky mask. Even from this one image, it looks like an improvement on the last Bane already.

Even though the character is not the best known by non-comic book fans, Nolan is sure to bring him firmly into the limelight and make sure he is a household name by the end of the film.

This being a Batman picture though, Warner Brothers weren’t just going to post it on the Internet. You had to look hard to find it.

The new website was launched and on it was what sounded like a sound clip of muffled noises. It was only when people analysed it, they discovered #thefirerises. This took them over to Twitter which in turn, then took them back to the hidden photograph on the website.

This may sound like a lot of hassle but fans loved it, with over 5000 people having already found the picture. And for all their hard work, this was a great reward for the fans. It is after all the villains that make the Batman films.

The new film is due for release July 2012, but expect a lot more viral quests before then.

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