Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster The Dark Knight Trilogy is coming to select IMAX theaters in honor of Batman’s 80th anniversary. Nolan’s trio of Batman films, starting with 2005’s franchise-reviving Batman Begins and ending with 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, took in a total of $2.4 billion at the global box office.
Warner Bros. first brought the Caped Crusader to the big screen with Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, but after a string of successful sequels the franchise hit the rocks with 1997’s notorious flop Batman & Robin. The studio then turned to filmmaker Christopher Nolan to bring the franchise back from the dead, which he succeeded in doing with Batman Begins, a new origin film starring Christian Bale as Gotham’s protector. Nolan then delivered a true blockbuster with 2008’s The Dark Knight, starring Heath Ledger in a legendary performance as Batman’s nemesis The Joker. The series wrapped up with The Dark Knight Rises, featuring Tom Hardy as the menacing bad guy Bane.
In honor of the first appearance of Batman in comics way back in 1939, Warner Bros. has announced that the full Dark Knight trilogy is coming to select IMAX theaters for 70mm screenings. The movies will first screen on March 30 at the Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood, California, together with a special Q&A featuring Nolan himself. The movies will then screen on April 13 at AMC Lincoln Square in New York City, New York and AMC Metreon in San Francisco, California, followed by more screenings on April 20 at Cinesphere Ontario Place, Toronto, Ontario, Canada and IMAX Theatre at the Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana. Footage of Nolan’s first night Q&A will be presented along with the later screenings.
Nolan of course was a pioneer in the use of IMAX for major feature films when he used the format to shoot action sequences for The Dark Knight. The director would later expand his use of IMAX for Dark Knight Rises and Interstellar, and would go even further in employing the technology for his 2017 film Dunkirk, which even employed handheld IMAX work for the first time. All the upcoming Dark Knight screenings will be in IMAX 70mm, with tickets going on sale Wednesday, March 13, at 9am PDT. Fans who buy tickets for all three films will also receive a lanyard and a special Dark Knight Trilogy collectible.
Nolan’s pioneering use of IMAX in the Dark Knight films of course opened the door for the format to become more widely used by Hollywood, to the point where now movies like the upcoming Avengers: Endgame are entirely shot with IMAX. Fans of The Dark Knight Trilogy who also love IMAX and old-fashioned 70mm, and who happen to live in one of the lucky cities where the special screenings are set to happen, are in for a great treat indeed.
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Source: Warner Bros.
