The Dark Knight Rises will contain over an hour of IMAX footage

The Dark Knight Rises looks set to become the first must-see-in-the-IMAX movie, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that the film will contain "more than one hour's worth" of specially filmed footage.

Warner Bros had initially suggested that the film would contain around 40 minutes of IMAX footage, before producer Emma Thomas revealed to Collider that that figure could rise to more than 50 minutes. Now that figure appears to have jumped again.

Christopher Nolan is fast becoming a pioneer of IMAX filmmaking, in much the same way that James Cameron championed and revolutionised Hollywood's use of 3D, having only agreed to direct The Dark Knight if he were allowed to do so in IMAX.

"There was a huge irony that we were told it would be too difficult to shoot a Hollywood movie on IMAX," says Nolan, "when we had this gigantic camera department, grips, electric… hundreds of people working for us."

"These were cameras that had been to the top of Mount Everest," he continues, "to the bottom of the ocean and into outer space, but people thought we couldn’t make a feature film. It was absurd."

The Dark Knight Rises opens in the UK on 20 July 2012. Sounds like an IMAX screening will be an extra couple of quid well spent...

And word is that a third (and final) Dark Knight Rises trailer will be doing the rounds with The Avenger s , which sounds like a doubly good reason to catch that one in the cinema...