Tom Hardy's Bane will have a voice box in The Dark Knight Rises

Tom Hardy's Bane will sound scarier than Scream's Ghostface killer if the latest Dark Knight Rises set reports are to be believed.

The actor is apparently using a voice box to control the pitch and tone of Bane's villainous vocals.

Despite the original rumour source being The Sun - the hallowed tome that once reported Eddie Murphy playing the Riddler in Batman 3 as fact - this one seems fairly realistic.

Bane's voice needs to be intimidating, to match Bale's intense delivery of Batman's lines, as the characters are supposed to be equals in the terror stakes.

So we're going to chalk this one down as a very realistic rumour.

After all, if Christian Bale and Tom Hardy are both doing gravelly voices using only their vocal chords, the production crew would have to double the throat-sweet budget.

That could run to billions.

But let's face it, even if they both sounded like Alvin from Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Threequel , we'd still be at the front of the queue when The Dark Knight Rises is released on 20 July, as we're pretty sure it's going to be the most awesome thing ever.

Sam Ashurst is a London-based film maker, journalist, and podcast host. He's the director of Frankenstein's Creature, A Little More Flesh + A Little More Flesh 2, and co-hosts the Arrow Podcast. His words have appeared on HuffPost, MSN, The Independent, Yahoo, Cosmopolitan, and many more, as well as of course for us here at GamesRadar+.