When deciding where to film the third installment of the Batman franchise, director Christopher Nolan made a bold move, choosing Pittsburgh to be the backdrop for Gotham City – not Chicago, the traditional Gotham City setting.
“Pittsburgh is a beautiful city,” Nolan said in a statement, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We have been able to find everything we were looking for here, and I am excited to spend the summer in Pittsburgh with our final installment of Batman.”
Filming is set to begin this summer, with recent Oscar winner Christian Bale in the title role.
“They’re still nailing down actual locations but what they really fell in love with was the diversity of architecture and the gorgeous buildings that we still have in downtown Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas,” Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office, told the Post-Gazette.
The final installment, “The Dark Knight Rises,” follows both the July 2008 hit, “The Dark Knight” and “Batman Begins,” which was released in 2005.