The still fairly recent hiring of James Gunn and Peter Safran to head up Warner Bros.’ DC Films arm has sent some ripples through the already turbulent air of DC movies. Wonder Woman’s third movie was put on ice ahead of Gunn and Safran’s pitch to WB for their overall plan, sequels for Superman and Black Adam may have gotten backburnered, and so on. Things are currently so uncertain that even movies you’d expect to be a sure thing are no longer going forward at the moment, like a Batman Beyond movie.
Yep, that was something in the works. Per the Hollywood Reporter’s recent Heat Vision news letter, a movie for the futuristic iteration of the Caped Crusader isn’t going forward at the moment. Booooooooooo. A script was in the works from Batgirl and The Flash writer Christina Hodson, one said to have excited executives, but Hodson has now reportedly been told to stop working on it. According to sources speaking to the Reporter, Michael Keaton would’ve come back as an older Bruce, and the hope was to also include a romance with Catwoman, maybe even going so far as to bring back Michelle Pfeiffer’s version of the character from Batman Returns.
If you weren’t born yet when Batman Beyond was on the air back in 1999 on KidsWB, the elevator pitch is that Batman (voiced back then by Kevin Conroy) retired and punk teenager Terry McGinnis (Will Friedle) took the mantle. The show gained a cult following back then, thanks in part to its connection to the DC Animated Universe, but its status as a part of Batman history since then has been…kinda complicated. Terry and his supporting cast were integrated into the main DC Comics canon, but that didn’t really mean anything until the aftermath of the New 52’s “Futures End” event, and he’s headlined his own comic in the years since. He’s still Bruce’s eventual son, but now the specialness of that is diminished by the existence of Damian Wayne and DC not really doing any time shenanigans to bring Terry in the relative DC present day.
With how beloved Batman Beyond is, and how much DC loves pulling that Batman trigger, a movie feels like a no-brainer. Maybe it’ll still happen after Gunn and Safran’s pitch, but keep in mind that Gunn himself said that the duo would potentially make some moves that would piss folks off. It could just as well be that a Batman Beyond film is something we don’t ever get to see.
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