The Batman will not be an origin story; Ben Affleck still in talks to star

What a rollercoaster it has been trying to get an all-new Batman movie off the ground. It’s been 6 years since the last standalone film and since then, we’ve had a pretty shaky new DC universe. Man of Steel was a divisive film but set the tone for a universe with potential and then Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad sort of ruined the public perception of it.

After Batman v Superman, it was revealed that after many rumors that the caped crusader himself, Ben Affleck, would pen the script for a new Batman film and also direct it. As time went on, Affleck went to rehab for alcoholism, suffered a divorce, and had his passion project, Live by Night, be ravaged by critics. Affleck backed out of directing the film and War for the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves stepped in back in early 2017 to help get the film off the ground.

Reeves threw out Affleck’s script and started anew with a strong focus on creating a detective noir story for Batman. Reeves has now been working on the project for a little over a year and he’s about to submit a draft of the script within the next two weeks. The acclaimed director spoke a bit more about the project at a panel at the Television Critics Association where he was promoting his Fox drama, The Passage.

“We are working on getting our draft [in] the next couple weeks,” Reeves said. “Right now, my head is totally into the script. Right now, I’m going to be leaving here to go back to work on the script.”

With a script being worked at pretty intensely, Reeves stated that they’re aiming to roll cameras next spring/summer. Reeves also addressed the rumors of Ben Affleck stepping down from the role of The Dark Knight (which seems more and more likely as time goes on) and said that he and Affleck are still talking about it but Reeves wouldn’t commit to a definitive answer on who is Batman.

“There are ways in which all of this connects to DC, to the DC universe as well,” Reeves said. “We’re one piece of many pieces so I don’t want to comment on that except to say that I’m focused very specifically on this aspect of the DC world.”

Reeves has been very clear with Warner Bros. about what this Batman story would be from the get-go so if they were planning to do a Batman reboot, he would’ve likely mentioned it as early as the start of 2017 which may have been premature, making it semi-unlikely.

“From the beginning, what I had always spoken about with Warner Brothers and what I was excited about was being in the Batuniverse and really doing something within that sphere,” Reeves said. “That was always what it was going to be so in that way it hasn’t changed a lot since I first met with them. It’s very much the same thrust if that makes sense. A lot of things have happened since then but the movie, and why I’m excited about it, is it continues to be the same inspirations and excitement of what we talked about in the beginning.”

It’s worth noting that it was also announced today that Ben Affleck has signed on to direct a film for Fox surrounding a scandal around the annual McDonald’s Monopoly promotion. The script is already being developed and if Affleck feels really confident in it and it is finished soon, Affleck could opt to direct that film instead of starring as Batman.

Furthermore, there were rumors circulating that The Batman would center around the popular “Year One” Batman storyline but Reeves claims that’s not the case. So if there was any reason to believe that they were looking to shoot for a younger Batman and fit it in with the story, Reeves seems to have squashed that idea.

“We’re not doing any particular [comic],” Reeves said. “Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One. It’s just exciting to be focused very specifically on a tale that is defining for him and very personal to him. Obviously we’re not doing an origin tale or anything like that. We’re doing a story that is definitively Batman though and trying to tell a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman.”

Finally, Matt Reeves talked about wanting to do something new for the on-screen version of Batman. Something different from Christopher Nolan’s movies and “definitively Batman”.

“I’ve talked about making it a very point of view noir-driven definitive Batman story in which he is investigating a particular case and that takes us out into the world of Gotham,” Reeves said. “I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favorite comics. Those all inform by osmosis. There’s no continuation of the Nolan films. It’s very much trying to find a way to do this as something that for me is going to be definitively Batman and new and cool.”

The Batman has no release date but if it does hit its planned production schedule of spring/early summer, we can expect the movie to release sometime in 2020.