In a few hours time, we’re going to get our first official look at filmmaker Matt Reeves’ The Batman which features 34-year-old Robert Pattinson in the title role. With the film giving us our second Dark Knight, while 48-year-old Ben Affleck’s own Batman is technically still around in the DC Comics Extended Universe and will be returning for the upcoming The Flash movie, some fans may be confused as to how “the Patt-man” fits into things.
With the Flash movie set to introduce the concept of the DC Multiverse, it has just been assumed that The Batman will be set in an alternate timeline, and now that has been officially confirmed… with some new details!
In the DC FanDome panel preceding the one for The Flash, DC Films President Walter Hamada, DC Comics Publisher Jim Lee, and TV producer extraordinaire Greg Berlanti – who created and produces all the Arrowverse shows – spoke about how the Multiverse came about in the comics and how it will function on-screen. And it’s here Hamada touched on The Batman and spilled some early beans on just where/when this new story about the Dark Knight takes place.
What the multiverse allows you to do is sort of lean into this idea of you can tell just great stories and you don’t have to really be as focused on it, and it has to fit within a singular continuity–on one Earth. We have the Gal [Gadot] and Jason [Momoa] and Ezra [Miller] version of the Justice League, and we can continue telling those stories. While on a separate Earth, we don’t have to worry about the continuity. We can have a more grounded real year two Batman and build out that world, and not really worry about continuity story elements.
It’s really kind of the best of both worlds and allows us to take advantage of everything that’s great about what we’ve done, and really allow us to sort of expand moving forward. And we’re trying to keep it as simple as that, like there is that one Earth–the greater Earth–of this existing Justice League, and then the beginnings of another Earth that is sort of happening in its early stages of year two Batman.
The “year two Batman” mention is the most intriguing to me since a lot of the set pics we’ve seen for the movie with Pattinson’s stunt double actually harks back heavily to the “Zero Year” comic book arc which explored Batman’s earliest days. Apparently, the movie won’t be quite that early, but will still see Pattinson’s Caped Crusader in his fledgeling crimefighting days.
As Hamada continues, he explained that having this young Batman allows Reeves to organically grow out his story far into the future with all sorts of supporting character like Zoe Kravitz’ Catwoman. And with this being on another Earth, they can take it in any direction they want.
[Matt Reeves has] got great plans to how to build it out, and build it out in a way that’s sort of innovative. And you know they announced recently that there’s an idea of taking back Gotham and exploring it at HBO Max–a show like [that] are things that you can do because we don’t have to worry about how that would impact Aquaman 2, or how that could impact The Flash, and so I think it just opens doors for us in ways that you couldn’t have if you had to have a singular universe.
Check back after 3am tomorrow morning where we will have more on The Batman.
And don’t forget, you can follow all our DC FanDome coverage over on our DC FanDome Hub Page!
Last Updated: August 22, 2020
Iskape
August 24, 2020 at 08:18
I AM STOKED! (PRT 7)