James Gunn hasn’t announced the end of Matt Reeves’ THE BATMAN EPIC CRIME SAGA.
Nobody has.
So why does the conversation keep sounding like a countdown?
Here’s what Gunn said, in a clip making the rounds from the official SUICIDE SQUAD podcast: Casting for the DCU’s Batman “isn’t very far away.” Nobody’s been cast — he shot down those rumors — but it’s coming…so he says. He’ll hire the best actor for the role; star power be damned. And on the question of age?
“Roughly, Batman and Superman are around the same age. They’re future best pals, contemporaries.”
David Corenswet is 33.
And one more thing from that podcast, because I can’t let it slide: This notion that Superman actors were always cast as the best actor while Batman actors were cast as “movie stars,” and that Gunn will be the first one to finally hire a real actor as Batman.
He does know the actors who have played Batman, right?
For over 30 years, the Batman film franchise has had some wonderful and talented actors cast as The Caped Crusader. Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson, front and center — two of the best actors of their generations. Michael Keaton, an actor’s actor. Val Kilmer could act circles around most leading men of his era. Even Clooney — the one everybody points to as the “star” hire — is a pretty damn good actor who just got handed a lousy movie. Your one exception is Affleck. No offense, Ben.
Anyway, I just had to address that.
And then there’s the man who is currently sports the cape and cowl.
Robert Pattinson sat down with BAFTA the other day for their “Roll Play” series (watch it HERE), and here’s where the star of this saga’s head is at: Batman is “the coolest superhero by a million miles,” shooting the film was an unbelievable experience, and he wants to “keep doing it for as long as I can.”
On PART II — which he’s back filming right now — he called the script “just amazing,” “another completely different world,” with a take on Bruce Wayne and Batman’s psychology he doesn’t think has been seen before.
Does that sound like a farewell tour to you? Because it doesn’t to me.
Now, I’ve long been a vocal proponent that you cannot have two Batmans on film at the same time (remember the JUSTICE LEAGUE MORTAL nonsense while Nolan and Bale were in the midst of making THE DARK KNIGHT?). It’s confusing, it’s diluting, it’s ridiculous.
But connect the dots with me.
Now — full disclosure, y’all — what follows is speculation. Mine. Nobody’s announced anything, nobody at Warner Bros. or DC Studios has confirmed a thing, and I could be wrong about every bit of it. But optics matter in this business. Perception can be reality. And from where I’m sitting, here’s what it looks like.
A Batman cast in his mid-30s, as Superman’s peer and “future best pal,” built to run for the next decade of DCU storytelling — that doesn’t look like a second Batman. That looks like THE Batman. The franchise Batman. The one the whole machine gets built around.
So where does that leave Robert Pattinson?
From the outside looking in, it makes THE BATMAN PART II look like a finale. That’s where. Whether anybody intends it that way or not, those are the optics. The way this appears to be trending? A big, beautiful sequel in 2028 — and then one Batman standing, and he won’t be wearing Pattinson’s eyeliner. Maybe that’s not the plan. But it sure is how it reads from out here.
Now here’s the corner Gunn is painting himself into: What happens if PART II is a monster? I mean a MONSTER.
Warner Bros. is a business, folks, and businesses do not cancel money. If Reeves’ sequel does THE BATMAN numbers or better — and there’s every reason to think it will — there is no world in which the suits shrug and say, “Well, James has a plan.” They will want a PART III. They will want it yesterday.
And then what? Gunn either presides over years of two Batmans — the very thing his whole architecture is built to end — or he goes to war with his own studio over a hit franchise. Studio heads lose that fight. Ask around.
The plan says one thing. The box office may say another. And in Hollywood, the box office is undefeated.
Want more proof the ground has shifted? Look at what’s left of the BRAVE AND THE BOLD you were sold in January 2023. The father-son movie? The Damian Wayne movie? The launch of the DCU Bat-Family?
A fan asked Gunn on Threads a couple of weeks ago if the plans for the DCU Batman have changed creatively since that announcement. Gunn’s entire answer was one word: “Yep.”
Asked if Damian is even still in it? He wouldn’t confirm. New writer. Director whose involvement “depends on timing.” No date. And now a Batman who’s Superman’s contemporary — a mid-30s Bruce who was never, ever going to be raising an assassin-trained teenager. Of the great 2023 unveiling, nothing survives but the title.
Here’s the thing nobody in the “everything must connect” crowd wants to say out loud: a shared universe doesn’t just add a Batman. It can absorb one — if you let it. Connectivity is not supposed to be annexation. Lately, though, that’s exactly what it feels like.
Now, I praised James Gunn in this space a week ago for saying stories matter more than connectivity. So, nobody can say I walked into this with an axe to grind.
Nobody begrudges Gunn a plan, and nobody expects him to dodge honest questions. But there is a Batman movie filming right now — his studio’s movie, Matt Reeves’ movie — and it doesn’t come out until 2028.
There’s a version of this where the answer is: “Rob and Matt are making something special. Our Batman will have his day — today is theirs.” That costs nothing, and it respects the people doing the work today. Instead, the man currently wearing the cowl gets to hear he was hired in the “movie star” era of Batman casting. Come on.
And here’s the question I keep coming back to: Why?
Why keep bringing up the DCU Batman at all right now? How is it a positive? It doesn’t sell one ticket for PART II. It doesn’t put one butt in a seat for any movie that actually exists. What it does — every single time — is put the most popular comic book superhero on the planet in the headlines, attached to James Gunn’s universe.
Maybe that’s just showmanship. Batman is the surest attention in this business, and teasing him keeps fans interested in a DCU that’s still mostly promise. Cheap marketing? Sure. Effective? Absolutely. Politics? Perhaps.
But here’s the impolite version, and I’ll ask it anyway: Is all this Batman talk for the fans… or is it about James Gunn? About keeping the gig, the momentum, and everybody patient while the universe gets built? I don’t know the man’s motives. Nobody does but him. I only know the effect — and the effect lands on somebody else’s movie.
Now — let me be clear about something. I’m not writing this saga’s obituary. Not when its star is saying he wants to keep going. Not when Reeves is mid-production on a script his Batman can’t stop praising. If PART II is great — and I expect it to be — and it hits the way the first one did, the PART III talk won’t be coming from fan sites. It’ll be coming from the Warner Bros. accounting department.
My worry was never really that this saga would end. Every saga ends. My worry is that it gets treated like it’s already over — talked past, planned around, and cast over — while the people making it are still in the middle of making something special.
I’ve argued for ONE Batman for a LONG time here on BOF, and I believe it now more than ever. And the one we’ve got has earned the right to finish his story without the next one — Superman’s future best pal — being cast over his shoulder. – Bill “Jett” Ramey
