As you're doubtless aware by now, several different Marvel Studios franchise will cross over with next Friday's The Avengers.  The film, directed by Joss Whedon, includes antics from Iron Man, Captain America, Incredible Hulk, and Thor, and they'll apparently be in proximity to Batman, as the third trailer for The Dark Knight Rises will play before showings of the superheroic ensemble.

There's a precedent for this, since a trailer for Bat-sequel The Dark Knight was attached to prints of Iron Man back in 2008, when Marvel was just kicking off its cinematic universe-building.  In addition, the final trailer for Nolan's Inception preceded Iron Man 2 in 2010.  So it's not a huge surprise that The Dark Knight Rises will be teased with The Avengers.

That news is courtesy of Nolan Fans, who found it on a Warner Bros exhibitor site, as evidenced by that which you see below:

Moving on to the film itself.  Nolan, who rebooted the Batman franchise with Batman Begins in 2005, is a vocal proponent of film, as opposed to digital shooting and exhibition.  Though 3D is a more common means of inflating ticket prices, blockbusters frequently get the jumbo-sized treatment by screening in IMAX.  With The Dark Knight, Nolan made the first narrative feature that utilized actual IMAX cameras, opening up the movies scope with over thirty minutes of IMAX footage. 

We've known that the director and his Oscar-winning cinematographer Wally Pfister again used the huge cameras for The Dark Knight Rises, and we've also known that the third film would feature even more IMAX shots.  Just how much of the finished film would be extra-large, however, has been a bit of a mystery. 

A new story in the Wall Street Journal, a pretty thorough overview of the narrative IMAX trend, mentions that Nolan's new Batman film will include more than an hour of IMAX material. 

With The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan's Warner Bros contract included that he be allowed to use the cameras, and the director said of that decision, "There was a huge irony that we were told it would be too difficult to shoot a Hollywood movie on IMAX 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, to the bottom of the ocean and into outer space, but people thought we couldn't make a feature film. It was absurd."

Christian Bale once again plays Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, and he's joined by fellow franchise veterans Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Nestor Carbonell.  Newcomers to the cast include Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Juno Temple, and Josh Pence.

The Avengers arrives with its Bat-trailer on May 4th, then The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters on July 20th.