So starts the viral ad campaign for the next installment of Nolan’s Batman franchise.

This comes to us from Hero Complex:

In a stroke of viral marketing brilliance, Christopher Nolan gave his intrepid fans on Twitter a sneak preview of “The Dark Knight Rises“: the first photo of Tom Hardy as Bane in the next Batman film.

As fans discovered, tweeting “#thefirerises” helps fill in the hidden Tom Hardy image on “The Dark Knight Rises” website, which launched Friday. Holy Twitter, Batman! What a way for Nolan to mark the first week of filming.

Tom Hardy is becoming one of my favorite actors, and while I didn’t love the movie Bronson, it was his performance in there that proved to me he was the right choice for Bane, and no doubt helped Nolan’s vision as well.

I can’t wait for 2012…