What's that he's saying?

Warner Bros is reportedly locked in a battle with Christopher Nolan, director of the forthcoming Batman superhero epic The Dark Knight Rises, over what has been described as the "incomprehensible" dialogue spoken by the film's main villain, Tom Hardy's Bane.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, which quotes unnamed sources, executives are "scared to death" over negative blog and fan reaction to an extended prologue to the film that has been screening before Imax presentations of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol at cinemas worldwide.

The action sequence in which Bane escapes from custody on board a CIA plane, has been heavily criticised because of the problem many audience members have experienced in making out quite what Hardy, whose voice is filtered through a mask that feeds him a super-strength serum, is talking about. "The Dark Knight Rises prologue was really great, especially when Bane spoke the soon-to-be-classic line: 'Mmrbl ffrmrff hmrbblfmm,'" wrote one fan on Twitter.

Nolan is said to be fighting hard against suggestions that he completely rerecord the sound for the section – and perhaps elsewhere in the movie – despite the concerns of executives who believe the negative buzz may damage The Dark Knight Rises' chances of matching its 2008 predecessor's impressive box office haul of more than $1billion worldwide.

At an early US screening of the prologue for film industry figures, Nolan is said to have hinted to a Hollywood Reporter journalist that he did not see a major problem with audiences failing to understand Bane's dialogue, though he also suggested that tweaking the audio might cure some of the issues. The visuals, he said, were ultimately as important to the storytelling as the dialogue. "Otherwise, it's just a radio play," the Reporter quoted him as saying.