Chapter 845: New Characters, New Roles

In addition to promoting Duke and keeping the audience's eyes on his latest moves, Warner Brothers launched another viral marketing campaign. This tactic wasn't a fit for every film—The Avengers, for instance, barely used it. Viral marketing required the right vehicle, and The Dark Knight Rises was unquestionably a perfect match.

Though The Dark Knight Rises was still in pre-production, a viral campaign needed exactly this kind of time to properly build momentum.

In late July, Warner Brothers released the first official character poster. Its sheer impact shattered the production's previous silence, catapulting the third installment of Duke's Batman Trilogy right back to the center of public discussion.

Alongside the poster, Warner Brothers launched the official website for The Dark Knight Rises.

When visitors first clicked onto the homepage, they found the screen completely pitch-black. A strange background audio loop played over it, sounding like some mysterious chant.

A few tech-savvy fans managed to extract the audio file's visual spectrum, discovering that the soundwaves formed an Instant Sharing hashtag. Much like the famous promotional poster for The Truman Show built from thousands of tiny photos, this campaign gathered small user images, using each one as a single pixel to densely piece together a massive mosaic. That final picture revealed Dwayne Johnson as Destroyer Bane, Batman's most formidable foe in The Dark Knight Rises.

Once the fans had fully pieced the image together, a strange letter appeared on the website.

It was a confidential letter from Lucius Fox to Bruce Wayne!

In reality, Duke had written the letter himself. It was designed to leak just enough information about The Dark Knight Rises to whet the fans' appetites without giving too much away.

"Bruce, I hope you read this letter. While I would have preferred to speak with you in person, Alfred informed me that it would be best to write to you while you are refusing visitors. Given the circumstances, I will use this letter to detail my assumptions regarding the internal situation at the company."

"Obviously, in the current economic climate, our investors are paying increasingly close attention to their investments. Because of this, our profitability is being scrutinized and analyzed by the board of directors."

"In the past, we gave them no reason to worry, as our revenues consistently balanced our expenditures. This granted us the autonomy to fund the Wayne Foundation's charitable initiatives alongside the company's own technological R&D. Over the last five quarters, however, our revenue has been on a downward trend. At the same time, our R&D expenses have skyrocketed to astronomical figures, leaving the company's overall profits dismal. In this situation, I must answer the board's questions—especially concerning the project you have been so passionately pursuing."

"No one will deny that innovation is the key to our growth and success as a business. That is precisely why the board has begun reviewing our R&D budget and redirecting the corporate machine's focus toward more justifiable investments. Because they do not understand what you are doing, all they see is massive amounts of capital being thrown into something they consider of little benefit—your pursuit of clean energy. That is the crux of the problem."

"During our last conversation, you indicated an unwillingness to plan ahead and initiate the next phase of the audit. I understand your reasoning. But if you wish to continue your project within the company, I believe it is time we gave the board a little more of what they want. Show them what this project will mean for Gotham City if you succeed, rather than just pointing to the company's baseline operations."

"Speaking personally, I also want them to know that as you grow older, you, Bruce Wayne, have decided to inherit your late father's work and ambitions, using Wayne Enterprises and its resources to readily and reliably support our city."

"There is nothing wrong with that, Bruce. But if you refuse to address the problem at hand, I do not know how much longer I can hold the line in front of the board. Your absence only makes matters more difficult. I am sure you have your reasons, and that is not my business. I worry, however, that if you continue to ignore this or remain absent for an extended period, we risk running afoul of another set of corporate bylaws. I can already foresee those board members sitting around the conference table, manipulating the company's influence. The most obvious threat is John Daggett. I feel he is the ultimate opponent we will face in this power struggle."

"I look forward to hearing from you."

"With any luck, I hope you will be able to look into this personally."

"Best regards, Lucius Fox."

In short, the letter told fans that there were internal problems within the Wayne Group. Someone was dissatisfied with the massive fortune Bruce Wayne had sunk into a new energy project and was trying to seize power, prompting Lucius Fox to hope Bruce Wayne would step forward and handle the crisis personally.

The fan reaction was incredibly enthusiastic. The letter was widely forwarded across the internet, sparking a flood of comments.

"Just looking at the tone of the opening, you can tell Fox wrote this."

Duke had indeed written it by deliberately mimicking Lucius Fox's speaking style from the films.

"Is Wayne Enterprises about to get publicly dragged and torn to pieces this time?"

The reality was even more severe than that fan's comment suggested: Bruce Wayne was on the verge of bankruptcy.

All publicity has a shelf life. After letting the campaign simmer for a while, fans kept The Dark Knight Rises in mind, but their attention gradually drifted elsewhere.

As the calendar turned to August, a CIA bulletin suddenly began circulating online.

It first disclosed the situation of a Russian nuclear physicist, with the bulletin indicating that the scientist had gone missing.

The leaked files showed that this former Soviet nuclear physicist had worked for the Soviet military for four years, overseeing nuclear facilities in the Chelyabinsk region before mysteriously vanishing. Three years ago, he had drawn the CIA's attention by participating in an event held by the IEEE.

Just last week, a militia group in Georgia contacted the American embassy, claiming they were assisting the doctor in seeking asylum in the United States and demanding $3 million in exchange for handing over the nuclear physicist.

Quick-witted fans instantly noticed that the profile picture of the nuclear physicist on the bulletin bore a striking resemblance to the actor Alon Aboutboul. Just days prior, Warner Brothers had announced Alon Aboutboul's addition to the cast of The Dark Knight Rises.

The next leak was a top-secret CIA document. The names of the speakers had been redacted, making it impossible to know who was talking. Readers could only roughly deduce that it was a conversation between CIA personnel and an informant who knew about the missing scientist.

The transcript revealed that the missing scientist had gone into hiding on his own. Someone was hunting him down, trying to force him to build a terrifying weapon. Terrified, he wanted to seek protection in the United States.

Viral marketing was hardly a new concept anymore. Fans who saw the leak quickly guessed it was related to The Dark Knight Rises, but they still couldn't help their curiosity. What kind of weapon was this missing scientist being forced to build? What was it for? Was it meant to destroy Gotham and Batman?

The first viral marketing campaign had already exposed that the film's main villain was Destroyer Bane. Consequently, numerous websites across the country received a package—a mysterious parcel sent by Bane himself.

The mysterious package consisted of two parts. The outside was a shipping tube wrapped in a map of Gotham City, with five different attack zones marked in red ink. Stuffed inside the tube was a T-shirt printed with Bane's face, accompanied by the slogan, "The Fire Rises."

The meaning of these two items was obvious: the arch-villain Bane was about to launch a full-scale assault on Gotham City, defeat Batman, and take control of Gotham himself.

The riots incited by Bane, a possible Nuclear Bomb, the CIA, a frantic scientist... Alright, fans already knew quite a bit about The Dark Knight Rises. Yet, before the film's release, that sense of anticipation always left them hungry for more!

That wasn't all. Ever since pre-production began, Duke stepped out for the first time to accept an interview, officially discussing The Dark Knight Rises with the media.

"This film will provide a resolution for the fates of all the previous characters. Among them is an extraordinary female character who will make an unprecedented appearance in a Batman movie. As for who she is? You will find out next May."

After seeing the reports, many fans began to speculate all over again. The production had long since announced that Gal Gadot would be playing Catwoman, Selina Kyle. Furthermore, the classic image of Catwoman had appeared in Batman films several times before; she certainly couldn't be described as "unprecedented."

Fans scoured the internet, digging desperately for any relevant information, but came up entirely empty.

Never mind the ordinary fans—even most of the crew didn't know who this character was. They only knew that Nancy Josephson's ICM was holding auditions among its actresses. The candidates had been sent to the production for Anna Printz and Tina Fey to test, and ultimately, Margot Robbie—recommended by Leonardo DiCaprio—had emerged as the lucky winner.

Very few people on the crew knew what Margot Robbie's role was, nor had they seen the relevant character scripts or scene setups. This transformed it into the production's most mysterious role.

Times had changed, and the social climate was shifting. According to statistics from various polling agencies, audience tolerance for deeply heavy and depressing films was steadily declining. Therefore, Duke was not preparing to make The Dark Knight Rises quite as bleak and heavy as The Dark Knight.

And Margot Robbie's character had only been added in by him when he was adjusting the script during the project's greenlight phase.