While The Dark Knight Rises doesn’t come out until over a year from now, that doesn’t mean anticipation can’t already be at a fever pitch. A couple of weeks ago, Warner Bros. revealed that Anne Hathaway has landed the role of Selina Kyle/Catwoman, and that previously announced Tom Hardy will be portraying Bane in the Christopher Nolan-directed film. Cinematographer Wally Pfister, who so beautifully filmed the previous two entries in Nolan’s Batman soon-to-be trilogy (as well as Inception) recently talked a bit about reading the script for The Dark Knight Rises, penned by Nolan and his brother Jonathan. When asked how Nolan can top The Dark Knight, Pfister responded thusly:

"I asked the same question. I read the script two weeks ago, and he's done it. Plain and simple — he's done it. It's a phenomenal script. He's still in the process of cutting it back because it's a very long script right now, but it's really phenomenal. And he actually had me go back and wanted me to watch, in IMAX, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight again. When I watched those I had read the script for The Dark Knight Rises and was like, 'dude, it is a perfect trilogy.' I think that was his intent, to work off those two pictures — and they are very different pictures. And it's funny, we all had different opinions about which picture we like better."

For more from Pfister, including his thoughts on Hathaway as Catwoman, hit the jump.

Talking to the Kevin and Josh Movie Show (via Nolan Fans and Ropes of Silicon), Pfister revealed that they plan to shoot the majority of The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX:

"Our goal is to shoot as much in IMAX as we can. We're going to put in on the screen, and put it on the screen big. And I really encourage everyone to see it in IMAX if they can because we're really going for it this time. In terms of the action, we are all scratching our heads right now trying to figure out how we're going to do it; how we're going to do it in the amount of time we're going to do it in. The opening scene of the movie will blow your mind."

The opening scene of The Dark Knight is damn near perfect, so it’ll be interesting to see what Nolan has in store to top that. Furthermore, the IMAX scenes in Dark Knight looked impeccable, so the more IMAX the better. It appears that Pfister shot Hathaway’s screen test for the upcoming film and had this to say regarding her as Catwoman:

"She's so good. She did an incredible job. She is a great, great actress… and she looked phenomenal in the wardrobe."

It looks like Nolan’s trained Pfister well in the way of “talking without saying anything at all.” Fine by me. I’d much rather know as little as possible going into this film. Nolan has a knack for surprising the audience with mind-blowing scenes, and this flick is sure to be no exception. Filming is set to get underway in May. The Dark Knight Rises hits theaters on July 20th, 2012. So now, we wait…