It’s one of the longest, most drawn out sagas in all of comic book moviedom, but it seems we may not have too much longer to wait until we get some official news on the status of The Batman, with writer-director Matt Reeves telling Slash Film that he expects to have his draft of the script complete in the next couple of weeks.
Reeves was said to have been “coy” about whether Ben Affleck remains involved as the Dark Knight, but did address some rumours, denying the recent report that the movie will be an adaptation of the Batman: Year One comic book storyline (which presumably means the reports linking Jack Huston to a role were also bogus).
“We’re not doing any particular [comic],” said Reeves. “Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One. It’s just exciting to be focused very specifically on a tale that is defining for him and very personal to him. Obviously we’re not doing an origin tale or anything like that. We’re doing a story that is definitively Batman though and trying to tell a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman.”
“I’ve talked about making it a very point of view noir-driven definitive Batman story in which he is investigating a particular case and that takes us out into the world of Gotham,” he continued. “I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favorite comics. Those all inform by osmosis. There’s no continuation of the Nolan films. It’s very much trying to find a way to do this as something that for me is going to be definitively Batman and new and cool.”
Reeves went on to identify a possible timeframe for when he’d like to shoot the movie, stating that: ““What we’ve talked about is hopefully in the spring or early summer, something like that.”
By this point, there have been that many rumours – Ben Affleck’s involvement (or non-involvement), whether it’s part of the DCEU or not, possible casting replacements for Batman, alleged villains – that it seems pretty clear that no one outside of Reeves and Warner Bros. has any real idea what’s going on with The Batman, and that most of these “reports” the past year or so have been little more than speculation – or even outright fabrication.
Let’s hope Reeves gets his script in quickly, Warner Bros. is suitably impressed to give it the green light, and we can finally get some official, concrete news about the project – either direct from Warner/DC, or from a reputable source that doesn’t trace its history back to Latino-Review.
Originally published August 3, 2018. Updated August 4, 2018.
