Via his interview for THE PENGUIN with SFX, here are a few blurbs from Matt Reeves on the upcoming HBO/MAX series and THE BATMAN: PART II…
On when filming commences…
The plan is to shoot next year, and we’re finishing up the script now. Colin [Farrell] will be part of the movie. We’ve shared [the script] as we’ve been going along with DC and the studio and they’re super excited.
On the connection between THE PENGUIN and THE BATMAN: PART II…
[THE PENGUIN is the] entry point. There are details that actually connect right into the way the next movie begins, and the way that Oz enters that world as we hand the baton back to Batman, and Batman is on another case.
More about THE BATMAN: PART II…
[PART II] is going to dig into the epic story about deeper corruption, and it goes into places that he couldn’t anticipate in the first one. The seeds of where this goes are all in the first movie, and it expands in a way that will show you aspects of the character you never got to see. Batman is constantly battling these forces. But those forces can’t be entirely exorcised. So the next movie delves deeper into that.
Will THE BATMAN SAGA will include the fantastical parts of the Batman mythos…?
What was important to me was to find a way to take these pop icons, these mythical characters that everybody knows, and translate it so that Gotham feels like a place in our world. We might push to the edge of the fantastical but we would never go into full fantastical. It’s meant to feel quite grounded.
It doesn’t mean that you won’t see characters that people love. That’s exactly what we want to do. Gentleman Ghost [in BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER] is probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do, but there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that.
I LOVE every-damn-thing Matt Reeves says here! Give me the grounded “Epic Crime Saga” and leave the fantastical to James Gunn and the DCU…IF the DCU even makes it far enough to include that Batman. – Bill “Jett” Ramey