…Christopher Nolan has taken a moment to reflect on his first foray to Gotham City this week, revealing how Batman Begins came about, and how Richard Donner’s Superman served as the basis for his reinvention of the Batman movie series: “My agent, Dan Aloni, called and said, ‘It seems unlikely you’d be interested in this, but Warners is sort of casting around for what they would do with Batman.’ It had reached the end of its last sort of life, if you’d like. And at the time, nobody used the term “reboot” — that didn’t exist — so it was really a question of, ‘What would you do with this?’ I said, ‘Well, actually, that is something I’m interested in,’ because one of the great films that I am very influenced by that we haven’t talked about was Dick Donner’s Superman….And so I was able to get in the studio and say, ‘Well, that’s what I would do with it’… What I loved about Superman was the way New York felt like New York, or rather Metropolis felt like New York. Metropolis felt like a city you could recognize — and then there was this guy flying through the streets. ‘That’s amazing, so let’s do that for Batman.” Check out Nolan’s full comments here…
…And while we’re on the subject of Christopher Nolan and The Dark Knight Trilogy, Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn has been speaking about the comic book movie genre ahead of the release of Kingsman: The Secret Service, stating that audiences are starting to get sick of the dark and gritty style of superhero movie popularised by Nolan’s Batman trilogy: “People want fun and escapism at the moment. Look at the success of Guardians of the Galaxy. I think Nolan kick-started a very dark, bleak style of superhero escapism, and I think people have had enough of it…”
…Gotham returned for the second half of its first season this past Monday, and you can check out a promo for the upcoming twelfth episode ‘What the Little Bird Told Him’ here…
…The next DC show to return from its midseason break is NBC’s Constantine, which will air the ninth episode ‘The Saint of Last Resorts: Part 2’ this coming Friday; check out a batch of promotional stills here…
…We’ve still got another week before The Flash returns to The CW, and a new ‘Speeding Bullet’ promo has been released which showcases the Scarlett Speedster’s growing rogues gallery, while Spartacus star Liam McIntyre was spotted on the set of the show and has since been confirmed as the Weather Wizard, a.k.a. Mark Mardon, the brother of Clyde Mardon, who will be looking for revenge after the death of his brother in the pilot episode. McIntyre will feature in the sixteenth and seventeenth episodes of the show…
…Switching to The Flash’s sister show Arrow and executive producer Marc Guggenheim has spoken about the upcoming three-episode Black Canary arc which will pick up from the shocking events of the midseason finale, describing them as “among the best we’ve ever done” and “incredibly compelling” [watch a promo for the midseason premiere ‘Left Behind’ here], while he’s also teased the possibility of a Supergirl crossover, as well as revealing which character he’d most like to have appear in Starling City: “At the end of the day it’d be so awesome to have Batman on the show. That’d be really cool. I don’t think that will be happening anytime soon, but you never know…one day. One thing we’re always saying…we never expected to have had the Huntress, Deathstroke or Deadshot; we ended up with a lot more DC Comics characters becoming part of the show than we had ever planned. It wasn’t initially part of the pitch or the conception of the show. Now here we are in our third season and we’ve Flash and the Suicide Squad and we’re going to have Katana and we have Ray Palmer, and it seems like you could field an entire show off the characters that we have introduced on Arrow. That’s so beyond anything we expected. That’s a long-winded way of saying I’ve learned not to expect anything or make any predictions because the reality has far exceeded any of our initial predictions or initial conceptions…”
…On the animated front, Phil Lord has been speaking about the upcoming LEGO Batman spin-off to The LEGO Movie, stating that: “No spoilers, but I will say I think the movie is really exciting because it’s about ‘Can Batman be happy? Wah, I’m so rich and handsome, and women like me, and I’ve got a Maclaren,’. “‘Something about my parents!’” Lord went on to tease the action planned for the movie, stating that: “The action in it is incredible. It’s impressive,” with Batman voice actor Will Arnett adding that: “The first bit that I’ve seen was mind-boggling…”
…And finally, ahead of its Blu-ray and DVD release on January 27th, Warner Bros. has released two clips and three new images from the Justice League: War sequel Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, which you can see here and here.
…Click below to continue on to the second page for Daredevil, A.K.A. Jessica Jones, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Spider-Man 3, Gotham, The Flash, Arrow, Constantine, Supergirl Powers and more…
Gary Collinson is a writer and lecturer from the North East of England. He is the editor-in-chief of FlickeringMyth.com and the author of Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&list=PL18yMRIfoszFJHnpNzqHh6gswQ0Srpi5E&v=zzYUW1bfw34
Originally published January 10, 2015. Updated November 29, 2022.
