James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU is set to expand with two more feature films and a television series in 2026, though it will be some time before the next “Elseworlds” project is released in theaters. The Batman was Matt Reeves’ take on the greatest detective in comic book history, produced and released in 2022, a few months before the change in leadership at DC Studios. The restructuring of the studio led many projects to be canceled or reshaped, though Reeves’ sequel, The Batman – Part II, would endure. The franchise even expanded with a spin-off show featuring Colin Farrell’s Penguin, though it has taken some time for The Batman follow-up to go into production.
Now, four years since the first film, new details have begun to emerge about The Batman – Part II. Casting rumors early on in the year had big names like Brad Pitt and Scarlett Johansson circling the project, though only the latter would be confirmed to be in the cast alongside Sebastian Stan, who has reportedly been hired as Harvey Dent. The plot of the movie has also been kept a secret, with not much known other than Reeves’ desire to tell a story that features a villain that hasn’t been done in a movie before.
Despite the secretive nature surrounding the project, actor Andy Serkis has teased that the story for the highly anticipated sequel is ambitious. While on the Happy Sad Confused podcast promoting his film Animal Farm, Serkis (who plays Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth) called the movie a “huge swing” as well as teasing that The Batman 2 is “deeper, darker, and more emotional” than the first movie. The Batman ends with much of Gotham flooded because of the Riddler’s (Paul Dano) terrorist attack, with much of the infrastructure of the city compromised.
The tumultuous pre-production of The Batman – Part II caused the project to experience significant delays, ultimately leaving the sequel with a release date of October 2027, over five years since the first movie was released. Because of this, Serkis said in a separate interview with Den of Geek that he isn’t entirely sure where the story of the film is at this point. This is because he “read a script a long way back, but I know it’s evolved and changed since, so I have no idea where it is at the moment.” Nevertheless, he explained his creative relationship with Reeves, which goes a long way back.
“[Matt Reeves] and I worked on the Planet of the Apes movies together first of all, and we developed a very strong friendship, and actually one of the themes that sort of link us is his relationship to fatherhood. So his is always an emotional approach, and he took a very emotional approach to Batman. In the first film, the relationship between Alfred and Batman is quite an emotional one. And that notion of father is important going back to your original [Apes]. It’s very present for us both, so I’ll be interested to see if that develops in this one.”
The Batman 2 may be a long time coming, but given Matt Reeves’ track record, the film will hopefully be worth the wait. Aside from this upcoming sequel, James Gunn and Peter Safran have also made it clear that they are planning to introduce a new version of Batman to integrate into the shared universe of DCU films. It’s unknown if the Brave and the Bold project that was announced when Gunn and Safran first took over DC Studios has impacted the production schedule of The Batman, or if plans for the Epic Crime Saga will be cut short to make way for a new version of the character.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
