Earlier today WarnerMedia announced the films and shows that will premiere on the HBO Max streaming service in April and with it they’re completing one of their most popular trilogies of all time. Among the titles arriving next month is Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises, the third and final chapter in his trilogy of Batman movies. The film will debut on the streamer on Saturday, April 17, where it will join predecessors Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, which are already streaming there. The 2012 sequel is the only new addition arriving on that date, but it will premiere the day after the highly anticipated Mortal Kombat reboot arrives on the service.
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Picking up from where the 2008 movie left off, the sequel saw Christian Bale return as Batman, this time going up against Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate (secretly big bad Talia al Ghul), and Tom Hardy as Bane. Hardy’s role as the back-breaking villain has been one of the elements from the film that has had the biggest impact on both pop culture and the Batman franchise, in particular the voice that the actor used while wearing his mask.
Nolan previously opened up about working with Hardy on the film, saying he believes that even over eight years after the film’s release that the appreciation for Hardy’s performance hasn’t been fully grasped by the public.
“There’s no safety net for any of these guys and Tom, I mean what he did with that character has yet to be fully appreciated,” Nolan said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “It’s an extraordinary performance, and truly amazing. The voice, the relationship between just seeing the eyes and the brow. We had all these discussions about the mask and what it would reveal and what it wouldn’t reveal, and one of the things I remember him saying to me, he sort of put his finger up to his temple and his eyebrow and said ‘Can you give me this to play with? Let people see this.’ Sure enough you see there in the film, this kind of Brando-esque brow, expressing all kinds of just monstrous things. It’s really quite a performance.”
Other comic book and superhero movies arriving on HBO Max in April include 2007’s Ghost Rider, 2011’s Green Lantern starring Ryan Reynolds, and the 1998 classic, The Mask of Zorro.
You can find the full list of content coming to HBO Max in April by clicking here.