Corona | Coming Attractions

The Dark Knight Rises, the final chapter in director Christopher Nolan's Batman movie trilogy will arrive on store shelves on December 4, 2012. Warner Bros. will be releasing the film on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download, and there will also be a special limited edition "bat pod" box set for Bat-collectors to add to their collection.

Just in case you were off planet this past summer, The Dark Knight Rises is the second-highest grossing movie in the Batman movie franchise, taking in $433 million dollars domestically (and $100 million of that came from IMAX showings.) For the third time Christian Bale reprises his role as the gruff-sounding caped crusader and tortured billionaire Bruce Wayne. Also coming back for the three-peat were Gary Oldman as Police Commissioner James Gordon; Morgan Freeman as Wayne Industries CEO Lucius Fox; and Michael Caine as Alred Pennyworth, the loyal servant and confidant of Batman/Bruce Wayne. New additions include Tom Hardy as the movie's villain, Bane; Anne Hathaway as Catwoman; Joseph Gordon-Levitt as street cop John Blake; and Marion Cotillard as Wayne Industries board member Miranda Tate.

Let's begin with the bonus features that will come on The Dark Knight Rises Blu-ray:

• "Ending the Dark Knight": A featurette showing how Nolan and his creative team prepared to draw a fitting conclusion to his Batman era of filmmaking.
• "The Batmobile Documentary": Take a look back at all five of the vehicles the Dark Knight drove in his movies. Profiles of each of the Batmobiles will be given including a breakdown of each of their capabilities, armament and technology.
• "The Prologue": How Nolan created the breathtaking opening sequence from The Dark Knight Rises where Bane hijacks a plane in flight.
• "Return to the Batcave": A look at the newly designed Batcave seen in The Dark Knight Rises.
• "Beneath Gotham": The subterraean lair of Bane and his henchmen is shown in detail.
• "The Bat": How is the Batman costume in the third movie different from the ones seen in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight?
• "Batman vs. Bane": The two fighters and their brawls are broken down and illustrated by the film's fight choreographer and stunt people.
• "Armory Accepted": The gadgets and weaponry of Batman, Bane and Catwoman.
• "Gameday Destruction": How was the sequence showing Bane detonating the playing field of the Gotham Rogues created?
• "Demolishing a City Street": The destruction of a Gotham street.
• "The Pit": Creating the desert jail of Bruce Wayne and Bane and giving the location its unique, forbading look.
• "The War on Wall Street": Bane's takeover of Gotham's financial hub.
• "Race to the Reactor": The car chase between Talia al Ghul and Batman.
• "The Journey of Bruce Wayne": How the character of Bruce Wayne evolved into who he is in The Dark Knight Rises.
• "Gotham's Reckoning": The mayhem of Bane: why he wants to destroy Gotham and his method of bringing the city to its knees.
• "A Girl's Gotta Eat": The creation of Anne Hathaway's Catwoman.
• "Shadows & Light in Large Format": The movie's look.
• "The End of A Legend": Bringing a close to Christopher Nolan's era of Batman movies.

Also included on the Blu-ray: the movie's trailers, art galleries and a DVD and UltraViolet copy of the film.

For a few more dollars you could size up your DVD/Blu-ray experience and get the Limited Edition "Bat Cowl" box set which includes the same Blu-ray/DVD combo set as well as a desk statue of Batman's broken cowl:

The studio will also release a Dark Knight Rises app that will be available on most smartphones. "TDKR: Gotham City's Most Wanted" will allow users to place a Tumbler vehicle into their personal photos, videos and more. A second update is planned to come in early December which will allow second screen integration.

Warner Home Video is pricing The Dark Knight Rises Blu-ray at $35.99 and the DVD version at $28.99, while the "Bat Cowl" limited edition retails for $39.99.

Call it official: The Dark Knight Rises has now earned more money at theaters than its predecessor, The Dark Knight. This weekend TDKR netted enough to push its worldwide gross to $1.005 billion dollars, $3 million dollars over the 2008 gross of The Dark Knight's $1.003 billion.

Of course, ticket prices have gone up in the four years since the release of The Dark Knight, and more screens are playing the IMAX versions of The Dark Knight Rises, further raising ticket prices.

Domestically, The Dark Knight Rises lags $102 million dollars behind the $533 million dollar gross of The Dark Knight. Nevertheless it's still the second-highest grossing domestic movie of the year, standing behind Marvel's The Avengers with its $619 million dollars earned to date.

In the aftermath of the Aurora theater shooting, the filmmakers behind The Dark Knight Rises are coming together to help. Warner Bros. has donated money and deferred publizing the box office results of their Batman film out of respect to the shooting victims and their families. Batman star Christian Bale flew into Aurora on his own initiative to visit the recovering victims in hospital, and DC Comics has delayed the publication of their latest issue of Batman.

Now Hans Zimmer, the composer of The Dark Knight Rises movie, has written and released "Aurora", an orchestral track of his own creation. Zimmer has released the music online and wants people to make a donation to the Aurora Victim Relief fund. People can make a donation anywhere between 10 cents to $25 dollars and they will get the full track.

"'Aurora' is dedicated to those who lost their lives and were affected by the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado," said Zimmer on his Facebook page. "I recorded this song in London in the days following the tragedy as a heartfelt tribute to the victims and their families. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to Aurora Victim Relief organization."

You can download "Aurora" and make a donation via iTunes or through the MoonToast app below.

Warner Bros. has released the final tally for the opening weekend of The Dark Knight Rises and it has become the new number one movie at the box office. Including the early Thursday midnight screenings, The Dark Knight Rises took in $160,887,295, giving the film enough to be the third-highest opening weekend on record.

Compared to 2008's The Dark Knight, the third Christopher Nolan Bat-movie beat its predecessor by $2.2 million, The Dark Knight went on to gross $533.3 million dollars domestic, and while the final estimate for The Dark Knight Rises won't be known for a while, it's highly likely that the picture will cross $400 million dollars domestic in a couple of weeks.

Ice Age: Continental Drift was the second-highest grossing picture this past weekend with $20.4m. The Amazing Spider-Man dropped to #3 with $10.8m, Ted is in #4 with $10.0m and Brave is #5 with $6 million.

In the aftermath of the senseless shooting incident that took place this weekend in Colorado, Warner Bros. has decided to withhold the early box office results for The Dark Knight Rises out of respect to the shooting victims and their families. Final figures will not be released until Monday afternoon. [Full story]

Director Christopher Nolan has released a statement on the weekend shooting tragedy that left 12 audience members dead and 49 injured.

"Speaking on behalf of the cast and crew of The Dark Knight Rises, I would like to express our profound sorrow at the senseless tragedy that has befallen the entire Aurora community. I would not presume to know anything about the victims of the shooting, but that they were there last night to watch a movie. I believe movies are one of the great American art forms and the shared experience of watching a story unfold on screen is an important and joyful pastime. The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me. Nothing any of us can say could ever adequately express our feelings for the innocent victims of this appalling crime, but our thoughts are with them and their families."

Four years ago when The Dark Knight opened in theaters, it went on to enjoy a commanding three-day box office finale of $158.4 million dollars. Just this May, Marvel's The Avengers set a new record for the highest-grossing opening weekend ever, $207.4 million dollars.

Could lightning strike twice in the same year? Is it possible for The Dark Knight Rises to eclipse The Avengers and set a new opening weekend record?

One site is augering that TDKR will surpass Avengers, but just by a small amount. According to their weekend forecast, Box Office Mojo is predicting The Dark Knight Rises will gross $214.7 million dollars this weekend, with $30 million alone from midnight screenings held tonight.

However, the Christopher Nolan three-quel does have two unknown factors that could work against it. While it sounds ghoulish to say, the untimely death of Heath Ledger evelated the pre-release hype for The Dark Knight to stratospheric levels. Thankfully there isn't a similar tragedy to play into the buzz for Dark Knight Rises. As well, TDKR has a longer running time -- 164 minutes -- and that near three-hour running time means less shows can be squeezed into theaters.

Two weeks out from the gen pop release of The Dark Knight Rises and people have already watched it.

Who are these folk? Select members of Hollywood, a smattering of film critics and members of the Hollywood foreign press. The first screening of The Dark Knight Rises for press took place two days ago on Friday. And if you read between the lines, the early articles and the tweets, the consensus from those that have seen the movie is that it's just as good, if not better than The Dark Knight.

In his article at The Los Angeles Times, Geoff Boucher describes Christopher Nolan's Batman film trilogy as "a tale of different levels — the heights of the city, the street level and the underground of caves and sewers. Dark Knight Rises presents a story where greed, hypocrisy and false justice bring down the city’s bridges, stadium and the houses of government."

A tweet from film critic Tom McAuliffe: "Just finished the screening of Dark Knight Rises...so much awesome...can't wait to see it again. And again. and "9 out of 10 for me. I'd put Amazing Spider-Man at a 7.5 and Avengers at an 8.5."

Another tweet, another positive reaction from @marcogennuso: "Vince just saw Dark Knight Rises at a press screening & says: "Wow. Quite speechless at the moment....TDKR was everything I wanted it to be."

And there was this anonymous post left at the same time on a Facebook group that's following the film: "As far as audience reaction, there were only 40-50 ppl in attendance (mostly critics), but there was applause and I leaned over and shook Michael Uslan's hand and congratulated him when his name appeared in the credits. I, myself, cried twice...once out of sadness and once out of pure geeky uncontrollable happiness."

Could it be that Nolan's third movie is the first one in a trilogy to be as great as the earlier ones? We'll all have a chance to see for ourselves when The Dark Knight Rises opens in theaters on July 20.

When you go see The Dark Knight Rises, make sure that you hit the bathroom first. The run time for the highly anticipated Batman movie is finally known thanks to a published report filed by the British Board of Film Classification, and it's 164 minutes and 27 seconds.

In practical terms, that makes The Dark Knight Rises 2 hours and 44 minutes long. When it comes out it will be the longest Batman movie made to date, beating the run time of The Dark Knight by 12 more minutes. [Full story]

With a month and a day left until the release of the movie, Nokia has debuted a new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises online containing new footage not seen before. 

What I like:

 -- Bane and his presense in this trailer.

 -- "Mr. Wayne."

 -- The almost complete absence of Anne Hathaway and her Catwoman save for that bit of comedy at the very end.

 -- A greater emphasis on action. This trailer might do the trick to stem the growing talk that The Dark Knight Rises could be filled with talking and not enough action.

The Dark Knight Rises comes out July 20.

A new teaser poster for the movie has been released, this time showing the heel of Anne Hathaway's Catwoman cracking one of the Dark Knight's batarangs.

This afternoon Warner Bros. debuted the final one-sheet for The Dark Knight Rises, which you see to the left. It also includes a new tagline for the movie: "A Fire Will Rise". What that tagline means and how it plays into the film still remains a mystery.

The latest ish of Entertainment Weekly features Christian Bale as Batman and Anne Hathaway as Catwoman on it. Inside the magazine there's new interviews with the film's stars, such as this quote from Tom Hardy on the controversy surrounding Bane's muffled voice from the Dark Knight Rises trailer: "The audience mustn’t be too concerned about the mumbly voice.As the film progresses, I think you’ll be able to tune to its setting."

There's also this quote from Hathaway about her Catwoman character: "She has a very strong way of protecting herself and those she cares about, which implies an underlying darkness."

Word breaks that The Dark Knight Rises has received its MPAA rating, and it's PG-13. according to a post made at the Nolan Fans website, TDKR received this level of classification for "intense sequences of violence and action, some sensuality and language."

What might be the first piece in a new viral marketing campaign (possibly for next week's IMAX release of the movie's six-minute prologue) has surfaced.

A strange made-up CIA document of one "Dr. Leonid Pavel" was sent to the Wired website. It didn't take long for the site's readers to figure out that the man in the document was actor Alon Abotabul, and he's playing a "mad scientist" in The Dark Knight Rises.