UPDATE 3: VARIETY confirms.
UPDATE 2: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is also confirming that Michael Keaton is Batman/Bruce Wayne in BATGIRL.
UPDATE 1: THE WRAP is now confirming that Michael Keaton is indeed part of the BATGIRL cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman.
My educated guess is that once the bat was out of the bag (it was apparently accidentally posted on the Warner Bros. UK website), WB contacted one of the trades to confirm it…probably before they were ready to announce it officially.
Thus as BOF, the trades, and others have heard for a year and a half, Keaton’s Bruce Wayne/Batman will exist as THE Batman in post-THE FLASH reconfigured “DCEU.”
Now, that doesn’t mean a new big-ass DC on film team-up movie is happening anytime soon, but clearly, this is a new direction, continuity, and cinematic world for all the live-action DC films that “connect.
CLICK HERE for the full story…and the original article follows. And lest we forget…
— Bill “Jett” Ramey (@BATMANONFILM) December 2, 2021
Happy Hollidays! – Bill “Jett” Ramey
Michael Keaton is in BATGIRL? Let’s talk…
Apparently, the Warner Bros. UK website previewed their 2022 slate and included, briefly, the HBO Max film BATGIRL. Included in the cast list for that film was Michael Keaton. Now there wasn’t a character attached to Keaton’s name (or any of the other members of the cast), but if this is the real deal — and right now I don’t have any reason to believe it isn’t — then it’s clear that he’ll be playing Bruce Wayne (and maybe Batman) in BATGIRL.
Since Keaton’s role as Bruce Wayne/Batman in THE FLASH was announced a year and a half ago in 2020, there was scuttlebutt that it wasn’t a one-off and that it was possible, maybe even likely, that he would play the character in other DC films. I had heard that maybe it was some sort of riff off of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and/or BATMAN BEGINS where Keaton’s older Bruce Wayne takes on a young partner and trains them to be his Bat-successor. And doing that with Barbara Gordon/Batgirl was one of the possibilities. That now seems to be the case.
RELATED | Which Batman is BATGIRL‘s Batman?
To note, I did not see the post on the WBUK website before it was taken down, but I did see the screenshot (which I will not post here for a variety of reasons). I did reach out to WB and others and can (or won’t right now) neither confirm nor deny the validity of it. But I will say that it appears to be legit.
So it looks like after the events in THE FLASH, the “shared” DC on film world will be altered and Michael Keaton’s version of Batman now exists in the new, reset “DCEU.” – Bill “Jett” Ramey
