Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale may be done with Batman, but much like screenwriter David S. Goyer, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises producer Charles Roven is set for a second spell with the Caped Crusader when Batman vs. Superman hits cinemas in 2015, and Roven – who also produced this year’s Man of Steel – has offered up a few words about the upcoming sequel during a chat with Variety.
“We wanted a guy who had a certain age and a certain gravitas to what he had done in terms of his recent work,” states Roven on the controversial casting of Ben Affleck as Batman: “If you take a look at The Town and Argo, he plays a couple of serious guys in those movies. He’s a big man. He’s also a mature man. As you see him and Henry Cavill [Superman] together, one definitely has much more experience just by looking at him. That’s what we wanted, particularly juxtaposed against our Superman.”
Roven then went on to offer a brief update on the status of the Man of Steel sequel, as well as touching upon how the idea came about: “On Batman vs. Superman, we started soft prep in June, and we’ll be shooting eight months later… We felt that we accomplished our goals with Man of Steel. Our intention was to bring Superman into the 21st century with a contemporary character and a different kind of superhero than what’s out there right now. We knew we had created a world and we had left Easter eggs in the movie that let people know that in the universe that Zack Snyder was creating, there was the possibility of other DC characters besides Clark Kent. We had a sketch of an idea, the beats of a story that David Goyer worked on with Zack. We have a first draft, and we’re continuing to work with it. Those scripts are never fully finished until the movie is in the theaters. We love the characters — we think that Ben is going to be a really great and interesting Batman.”
Batman vs. Superman is set for release on July 17th 2015, with Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill joined in the cast by returning Man of Steel stars Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Diane Lane (Martha Kent) and Lawrence Fishburne (Perry White).
Originally published November 19, 2013. Updated April 13, 2018.
