First pic of Bane from ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ unlocked by tweet

Christopher Nolan has kicked off filming his latest Batman film, "The Dark Knight Rises," with a viral marketing campaign that is bound to get fans a little excited.

The film's website www.thedarkknightrises.com went live earlier today, but confounded fans with an empty black page and an audio clip of people chanting.

It didn't take long for someone to figure out that when the sound clip is run through an audio program, the spectrum reads '#TheFireRises,' encouraging anyone with a Twitter account to tweet the hash tag and see what happens.

Fans were rewarded by a reply from the account @thefirerises with a link to this photo, the first still image from "The Dark Knight Rises" featuring Tom Hardy as Bane. The photo has since been turned into a piece of hashtag art, so here's a clearer look at the photo from Superhero Hype:

'The Dark Knight Rises' is scheduled for a July 2012 release, leaving plenty of time for Nolan to tease fans with more viral goodies. After all, there's still plenty of questions about what Anne Hathaway will look like as Catwoman or exactly how Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character John Blake will fit into the story.

(Photo: Screengrab taken from Superhero Hype)