DEBUNKED: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Prologue Audio Gets Remixed to Better Understand Bane

UPDATE: The much talked about 6-minute prologue for director Chris Nolan's third and final Batman film has apparently been given a revamp to help clear up audience inaudibility issues.

The Dark Knight Rises is the epic conclusion to filmmaker Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy. Leading an all-star international cast, Oscar winner Christian Bale again plays the dual role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. The film also stars Anne Hathaway, as Selina Kyle; Tom Hardy, as Bane; Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, as Miranda Tate; and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as John Blake. Returning to the main cast, Oscar winner Michael Caine plays Alfred; Gary Oldman is Commissioner Gordon; and Oscar winner Morgan Freeman reprises the role of Lucius Fox. The screenplay is written by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan, story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer.

Movie goers who caught select IMAX screenings of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol were treated to a 6-minute prologue of The Dark Knight Rises which will also serve as the film's opening scene. The internet was soon overwhelmed with mixed reactions from those who had seen it; a large part who were saying that, while it contained amazing visuals, Tom Hardy's masked villain Bane couldn't be understood. This complaint even continued through the release of the film's first full length trailer (seen below) where Bane only had a single line.

A week later a rumor sprouted -- noted from an unnamed studio source -- that director Nolan would not adjust the audio quality of the film, regardless of Warner Bros or the audience's requests. Now a report from Collider.com seems to prove that statement false:

“A friend of mine who is an IMAX projectionist told me they received a new soundtrack for the Dark Knight Rises prologue. He said it’s now a combo soundtrack with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, but the cool thing about this is that they’ve cleaned up the dialogue. They’ve gone in and lowered the background noise of the plane and other things, thus making Bane’s dialogue clearer and more understandable. He asked some people after they left the movie if they could understand Bane and they all said they had no issue understanding him, and were excited for the movie.”

This claim alone wouldn't be enough to 100% confirm an audio adjustment of the footage, but the site recently updated their post with the below image from a "letter that IMAX sent to theaters detailing the new audio mix for The Dark Knight Rises":

UPDATE: New York Times reporter Dave Itzkoff sent out a Twitter message this morning denying the report: "Warner Bros. says "no truth" to reports of new Dark Knight Rises prologue trailers going out with fixed Bane audio."

Soon after, Collider's Editor-in-Chief updated the news article which contained the scoop with this statement: "Warner Bros. has contacted me and said that our story is absolutely not true. While I’ve dealt with the source who sent me the letter before, I wanted to make sure we are always posting the truth."

The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale, Gary Oldman​, Michael Caine​, Morgan Freeman​, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt​, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard​, Josh Pence, Daniel Sunjata, Diego Klattenhoff, Burn Gorman​, Nestor Carbonell, Alon Aboutboul​, Matthew Modine​, Tom Conti, Brett Cullen​, Chris Ellis and Joey King and is scheduled to hit theaters July 20th, 2012.