Warner Bros. Pictures just released the first trailer for the The Dark Night Rises on the movie’s official Facebook page. The highly anticipated new Batman movie will be released in the US on July 20, 2012 (the picture shows the first poster that was made public a few days ago).

The teaser is 1.35 minutes long and doesn’t give too much away.

Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Via ComingSoon.net

Batman x MIMOBOT is here! from MIMOBOT & mimoZine on Vimeo.

Mimoco’s Mimobot flash drives are a staple in the novelty flash drive market. Who doesn’t want one the awesome Star Wars drives? Now the eternal battle between good and evil can wage on your desk with the Batman flash drive series. The collection includes , The Caped Crusader, Boy Wonder, Catwoman, and of course, The Joker. There’s even a limited edition Batman just in case the vintage Batman is more your thing.

Prices start out at a reasonable $25 for 2GB, but can shoot up to $60 for the 16GB versions. All versions come loaded with wallpapers, avatars, and screensavers along with MimoByte sound software, which your cube mates will no doubt love.

Some very important Batman news for your Wednesday afternoon. It seems that Anne Hathaway, who showed actual acting chops in Rachel Getting Married, will play Catwoman in the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. Tom Hardy, one of the actors in director Kevin Nolan’s non-Batman movie, Inception, will also be in the movie, playing the role of Bane. And here I thought Bane was some jack-up, roided-out weirdo, whereas Hardy is rather normal-looking.

Nowhere in today’s release is there any indication that Nolan plans to cave into fan pressure and bring in The Riddler.

You’ll recall that prominent Batman fan and co-host of Sirius XM’s Ron & Fez Show, Fez Whatley, had promised never to see another movie until, or unless, Nolan put The Riddler in the movie. With no Riddler in sight, Whatley’s protest continues unabated.

Is 3D already in trouble? Quite possibly, and there’s a few data points to back up that claim. As you know, Christopher Nolan has announced a few things pertaining to the next Batman movie, namely its name (the Dark Knight Rises), that The Riddler won’t be in it (much to fans’ chagrin), and that it won’t be filmed in 3D. I’m pretty sure the previous Batman movie, the Dark Knight, was a gigantic success, so to not film it in 3D is quite the snub. Sorry, 3D, but the prettiest girl at the dance wants nothing to do with you. (Stupid metaphors are stupid.)

Now there’s word that ESPN 3D isn’t doing too well, either.

The channel, which launched in time for the 2010 World Cup (which, incidentally, comes out on 3D Blu-ray in two weeks), will come under review in early 2011 to see if carrying it makes business sense. No use having to produce and/or license content for a channel that nobody watches, or that nobody can watch.

The primary problem, as ESPN’s Senior Director of Technology, Johnathan Pannaman, told a European business conference, is that ESPN is “still not sure what makes sense for 3DTV, and we don’t yet see a proven ROI [return on investment].”

So, ESPN doesn’t know what works when it comes to 3D sports broadcasts, and there’s no money in it. It’s not too dissimilar to what ESPN said at IFA in September: filming sports in 3D is tricky.

Pannaman then said ESPN is looking forward to this holiday season, because then, hopefully, people will buy 3DTVs en masse, and the channel will at least have the potential viewership to be viable.

Then again, you look at something like the unemployment rate for the U.S., and you wonder how many people are even in the position to upgrade to a 3DTV, perhaps only a few years after they upgraded to an HDTV.

Recent sales data suggested as much, that not too many people were upgrading to 3DTV. You know the reasons: 3DTVs are expensive, wearing 3D glasses is cumbersome, and there’s no 3D content.

That last point is cyclical: if consumers see there’s no 3D content out there why should they buy a 3DTV? And if consumers don’t buy 3DTVs why should companies like ESPN invest in producing 3D content?

We’re looking at a situation where 3D technology is still very new—you’ll recall the torrid time Sony had filming the 2010 World Cup in 3D—and consumers, for a variety of reasons, aren’t all that interested just yet.

Hopefully this doesn’t come as a shock to you, because we’ve been saying it pretty much all year long.

Batman fans reacted with anger on Thursday upon learning that director Christopher Nolan has ruled out using The Riddler in the upcoming movie The Dark Knight Rises. The movie, the third Batman under Nolan and currently scheduled to be released on July 20, 2012, will instead “introduce some new [characters]” as well as use some of the existing ones.

The Dark Knight Rises will begin shooting in April and will be filmed in IMAX but not 3D. Given how carelessly Hollywood has used 3D in the past, that’s probably good news for Bat-fans.

Nolan’s exclusion of The Riddler has angered many in the Batman fan community.

Fez Whatley, a well-known Batman fan and co-host of The Ron & Fez Show on Sirius XM, was particularly annoyed with Nolan’s decision. Whatley said on Thursday that he’d boycott all movies unless Nolan reconsidered his decision.

“You need to have The Riddler,” said Whatley. Introducing other villains is fine, he said, but to ignore the “classic characters” is a mistake.

“The movie-going experience has been ruined for me,” he added.

Whatley is thought to be considering rallying the Whatley Posse, an informal fan group, in order to protest Nolan’s decision.

Earlier rumors had suggested that the new Batman film would feature Killer Croc, but this would appear to go against Nolan’s vision of a realistic Gotham City.

Comic-con starts today (I’ll be there tomorrow~!), so that means we’ll be seeing a bunch of comic book-related movie news coming at us in the next few hours. There’s already a few tasty bits of information out there. Like, will Killer Croc be the primary antagonist in the upcoming Batman movie? (The movie is set to be filmed in and around New Orleans.) Incidentally, Cros was probably my favorite villain in the old Batman cartoon.

What evidence is there to support Killer Croc? Well, beyond the merely superficial—the movie is in New Orleans, and they have gators down there! (Crocodiles aren’t really found around New Orleans)—comic book writer Mark Miller said that the villain is “from [his] favorite childhood runs on the character,” before adding “again, very unexpected.”

Signed, sealed, and delivered: Killer Croc is your new villain.

Moving on from Batman, let’s pay Halo a visit.

Now how’s this for a rumor: apparently Stephen Spielberg (the real Spielberg, and not Señor Spielbergo!) is interested in directing it. Whoa!

Word on the street is that Spielberg’s DreamWorks studio is trying to acquire the movie rights, with both the games and the various novels serving as source material.

It must take a special kind of Halo fan to have read the novels. I mean, I tried to read one of the Mass Effect ones, but I was like, “Man, I could be reading about actual space stuff, let me put this down…”

And there’s one more movie rumor for you this crisp autumn morning, and it involves Wolverine.

Darren Aronofsky, who directed The Wrestler and The Fountain (which I thought was quite good), has apparently been offered Wolverine 2. That is, the studio wants him to direct it. What could be holding that up is that Aronofsky is interested in directing a movie called Gangster Squad.

You can’t direct two movies at the same time, now can you?

This week’s episode of Speaking Of… is with the originator of the modern Batman movies and creator of the Batman franchise, Michael Uslan.

I’ve found that you never know where or when you’re going to receive amazing entrepreneurial advice. You have to keep your eyes, ears and heart open and then you’ll stumble into some amazing people who have extraordinary stories to tell that you can learn from. Entrepreneurial advice for tech companies doesn’t need to come from someone who’s been in our trenches. Businesses are businesses and we can all learn from each other, no matter what industry we’re in.

Michael Uslan’s story is the typical story of success. From the outside, it seems like an obvious win, but from the inside there was a long and painful struggle to get to the other side. It took Michael 10 years of pitching a dark and serious Batman in order to get it made into the first movie. It was written up as an “overnight success”, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here is one of my favorite parts of our interview:

“I’m a blue collar kid from New Jersey. My Dad was a mason, my mom was a bookkeeper. I couldn’t buy my way into Hollywood. I didn’t know anyone in Hollywood, didn’t have any relatives in Hollywood. My last name isn’t Warner. I only have one brother and for me its the story of how I, at every opportunity, tried to put my foot in the door and tried to make a path – carve a path. If I had said when I was a kid, “Oh, I’m going to produce the greatest Batman movie ever – dark and serious”, might have well as said I was going to jump across the Grand Canyon. You can’t do it. But, if you keep taking steps that lead you on a certain path, and don’t let anyone – friends or anyone else veer you off course, you can, if you have the passion. If you have a high level for frustration, you can do it. That’s how I did it. These dark serious Batman movies, the Batman franchise, was built on my bloody knuckles.”

Michael tours colleges and universities to share his story and is releasing his autobiography, “The Boy Who Loved Batman” on Chronicle Books in fall of 2011.

Some Batman news, if only because Batman is the best comic book superhero of all time. I will debate this all day if need be, Lord knows I have nothing else going on in my life. The news this morning is that the next Batman movie, tentatively called Batman 3 (but you know the final name will be something like Batman: Vengeance), will feature The Riddler as the main villain.

Currently scheduled to play The Riddler is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, perhaps best known for his roles in 10 Things I Hate About You, Inception, and G.I. Joe. He was also in 3rd Rock from the Sun, as folks have reminded me. The “currently” is key because even though the studio’s casting grid lists Gordon-Levitt as The Riddler, the movie is in such pre-production that Christopher Nolan could freak out and demand, say, Shia LaBeouf play The Riddler.

As an old-time fan of Even Stevens, I’m required by law to not hate Shia. He may be a geek, but that doesn’t make him a bad person.

Presumably more info will be available as Comic-Con progresses over the next few days.

Yup, this is a trailer for Batman XXX: A Porn Parady. It’s awesome and since it’s totally SFW, you should watch it just for the lulz over the fact that the movie actually exists. (via BoingBoing)

Yes, there will be another Christopher Nolan-directed Batman movie. This should be good news since the first two movies were good, certainly watchable. But what about this scary prediction: the movie will be garbage, and there’s ample evidence to support this.

The theory goes that movies with trilogies follow this simple pattern:

First Movie is good, Second Movie is better, Third Movie is outrageously terrible.

Some examples:

Spider-Man was good, Spider-Man 2 was better, and Spider-Man 3 was really, really awful

X-Men was good, X-Men 2 was better, and X-Men 3 was yikes bad go away

Star Wars was good, Empire was better, and Return of the Jedi was not very good at all*

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was good, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 was better, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 pretty much ruined my life it was so bad

Godfather was good, Godfather Part II was better (if only slightly), and Godfather Part III might as well not even exist

The fear, of course, is that THE GODS THEMSELVES are conspiring to make Christopher Nolan’s third Batman movie a complete hunk of garbage. Whether that’s the case or not, well, that’s why we test theories in science. Once the theories breaks down, time to find another theory.

Full credit to Ron and Fez for sparking this post.

*So I understand. Remember: I’ve only seen Episode I and III.

Listening to Ron and Fez right now, neither Fez nor East Side Dave were about to identify the Tumbler, the Batmobile from Batman Begins. Tsk-tsk. No matter, because you, too, can own a Go Kart replica of the vehicle in question.

This here video pretty much explains everything: it’s a fully drivable Go Kart modeled after Batman’s “whip,” as the kids call it these days.

It’s actually on eBay right now, priced (as of 1:00PM EDT) at $30.88. The irony here is that writing about the car I’m making it harder for people to buy it (by drawing attention to it). What are you going to do.

The Batman: Arkham Asylum™ demo opens as the DARK KNIGHT and COMMISSIONER GORDON return The Joker back into confinement at ARKHAM ASYLUM. But things soon fall apart as THE JOKER gains the upper hand and springs a trap, setting Arkham Asylum’s occupants upon Batman. The demo offers gamers a taste of the fierce FreeFlow™ combat system, the cunning stealth of the Invisible Predator™ mechanic, and the feeling of becoming the WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE as they navigate Arkham Asylum’s imposing Intensive Treatment facility. Players can unlock character bios, as well as get a sneak peak at some of the infamous foes that BATMAN will encounter within the cavernous and macabre confines of Arkham Asylum.

So, how messed up are the souls residing in Arkham Asylum? Check out the latest developer diary from the chaps at Rocksteady Studios. Paul Dini also talks about the storyline for this upcoming Eidos/WB title. I played a bit of it at E3 and it’s pretty damn fun. Can’t wait for it to drop on August 25th.

Here’s the product description:

“Take control of the Dynamic Duo, Batman and Robin, as you build, drive, swing, and fight your way through Gotham City capturing escaped villains and putting them back in Arkham Asylum where they belong. Battle against legendary villains including The Joker, The Penguin, Catwoman and more to keep the streets of Gotham clean. Then, for the first time, jump into the story from the other side and play as Batman’s foes. Enjoy the power you wield as you spread chaos throughout the city.”

Yay! I’ve ALWAYS wanted to play as Catwoman. Play as Catwoman, be Catwoman in real life — same difference. Other available platforms include the PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, PC, and PS2.

LEGO Batman [Amazon via FatWallet]

I’m a sad clown now.

Eidos Interactive and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment can today confirm that Batman: Arkham Asylum will be released at the end of summer 2009. This additional time will allow us to ensure Batman: Arkham Asylum is of the highest quality for gamers.

Assuming you own both the Xbox 360 and PS3 and you’ve been wondering which console you’re going to pick up Batman: Arkham Asylum for then know that Sony’s console has the exclusive on a playable Joker. He’ll be released via the PSN Store and can be played in Challenge Maps. Further details can be found in the June issue of PlayStation: The Official Magazine.

Late last night, GameTrailer got the scoop on the latest villain trailer for the game and it’s the Joker’s right-hand gal Harley Quinn. I won’t lie, she looks pretty sinister and somewhat arousing for a, you know, video game character.

http://www.gametrailers.com/remote_wrap.php?mid=48062

Besides the Joker, the Dark Knight will be tormented by the ‘roid raging Bane in the upcoming Xbox 360, PS3 and PC title Batman: Arkham Asylum.

BANE
REAL NAME: Unknown
OCCUPATION: Professional criminal
BASE OF OPERATIONS: Gotham City
EYES: Brown (when on Venom: Green)
HAIR: Brown
HEIGHT: 5 ft 6 in (when on Venom: 6 ft 8 in)
WEIGHT: 140 lb (when on Venom: 350 lb)
FIRST APPEARANCE: Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1 (January , 1993)

Imprisoned from birth to serve his dead father’s sentence, Bane was raised inside the horrific environs of a Santa Prisca prison. Finding solace in smuggled book and meditation, he developed incredible powers of concentration. When he was subjected to military experiments with the experimental steroid Venom, his iron-forged will helped him survive when other test subjects had died, and he manage to escape. Determined to prove his worth, he sought out Batman and broke the Dark Knight’s spine. But Batman recovered and managed to best Bane, cutting off the precious Venom supply that transforms Bane into a superhuman.

Attributes:
• Master strategist
• Intense focus
• Abnormally strong reaction to Venom, giving him incredibly enhanced physical abilities
• Determined to best Batman, and all others who challenge him

Eidos and Warner Bros have just officially announced the CE of BAA and it’s a tad different than what Gamestop has on their website. Hit the jump to see what $100 will get you this summer.

* 14″ Batarang with stand
o Matches the Batarang’s in-game design

* Arkham Doctor’s Journal
o 48 pages of notes on Arkham’s inmates
o Embossed leather dust jacket

* 2 Sleeve Digi-pack, including:
o Game disc
o Behind-the-scenes DVD

* Code for downloadable Challenge Map
o Exclusive “Crime Alley” map, available immediately
* Full-color Manual