The Dark Knight Rises 'based on A Tale of Two Cities'

The latest film in Christopher Nolan's blockbuster Batman series, The Dark Knight Rises, is based on Charles Dickens' 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities, the director has revealed.

The film is released in the UK next week and widely expected to break box office records, following the tremendous success of the first two instalments in the series, 2005's Batman Begins and 2008's The Dark Knight.

Nolan said that he cannot take full credit for the plot of the film, however, after revealing that Dickens' classic novel helped to inspire the screenplay, written by his brother Jonathan 'Jonah' Nolan.

'When Jonah showed me his first draft of his screenplay, he said "You've got to think of A Tale of Two Cities",' Nolan explained.

'When I read the script and was a little baffled by a few things I realised that I'd never read A Tale of Two Cities. Then I got it, read it and absolutely loved it and got completely what he was talking about ... When I did my draft on the script, it was all about A Tale of Two Cities.'

Unlike the Dickens novel, which is set in England and France in the late 1700s against a backdrop of social discontent and political corruption, Gotham City is based on New York, though many elements are retained, Nolan explained.

'What Dickens does in that book in terms of having all his characters come together in one unified story with all these thematic elements and all this great emotionalism and drama - it was exactly the tone we were looking for.'

The Dark Knight Rises, which Nolan claims will be the final instalment in his Batman film series, is released in the UK on Friday July 20th.