Keaton-led Batman Beyond movie was coming but has been put on hold!

Oh, man, more potential heartache for DC fans as it seems that among all the chaos happening over at DC/WB has had another casualty – for now at least – in the form of Micheal Keaton’s Batman and a planned Batman Beyond movie.

Dammit, DC!

S0, in the aftermath of the bombshell report that dropped late last week that stated Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck may be out of the DCEU moving forward and, as of now, Wonder Woman 3 wasn’t happening, one of the few bits of light we here at FTN held on to was the news that Michael Keaton’s Batman would still be around by the end of next year’s The Flash.

Cliff notes for those who don’t know but The Flash movie will see Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen/Flash changing time, resulting in Keaton’s Batman replacing Affleck’s in the DCEU due to timey-wimey stuff. We knew this a long time ago and we know that the now-cancelled Batgirl movie would have had Keaton’s Batman along with Leslie Grace’s Bagirl, continuing the set-up from The Flash.

We did a whole show about it at the time:

However, we always assumed that this wasn’t going to be permanent and that eventually we’d get Affleck back and Keaton would return to his own universe… we even speculated (hoped) that this would lead to a Batman Beyond movie in which an aging Bruce Wayne would hand over the reins to a new Batman, guiding him in his crime-fighting career.

And now it seems that this was indeed the plan but alas, as of right now, that plan has been put on hold.

Agghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

The new report has it that The Flash (and Batgirl) writer Christina Hodson was working on a Batman Beyond script with Keaton’s Batman at the centre of the tale but when James Gunn and Peter Safran took over, the project was put on hold. Once again, we cannot stress enough, this doesn’t mean it’ll remain this way, Her idea for the movie had apparently got the previous WB regime very excited.

The idea was to have Michelle Pfieffer return as Catwoman – returning to the romance that kicked off in Batman Returns in 1992.

If there’s any consolation to be had, it’s that Gunn and Safran are reportedly big, big fans of Terry McGinnis, the youngster who takes up the mantle of the Bat in Batman Beyond, so we’re not ruling out a return to this idea at some stage but the idea that we were THIS close is painful.

The return of Pfeiffer’s Selina Kyle/Catwoman would make sense, given that we know her and Keaton’s Bruce Wayne married; this was revealed in the Arrowverse massive Crisis on Infinite Earths event which saw Batman ’89 star Robert Whul return as Alexander Knox (here), so we already have a little further insight into the Burtonverse after 1992’s Batman Returns.

Although, most recently, we got a Batman ’89 comic series which saw the Burton universe expand with Billy Dee Williams’ Harvey Dent finally becoming Two-Face and Batman finally getting a Robin in that universe, which leads us to another bit of Batman ’89 news which is a little confusing.

So, for a long time fans speculated that Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Keaton’s Batman existed in the same reality and now this has been confirmed by the DC Comics one-shot, titled Dark Crisis: Big Bang.

In the comic Barry Allen takes note of all the realities he’s visited and in there he mentions ‘Earth-789 —Superman and Supergirl are Earth’s only powered heroes; Batman’s parents killed by the joker. (Superman ’78, Batman ’89).’

Which is cool and all but a little confusing.

In the aforementioned Crisis on Infinite Earths event it was clearly shown that the Reeve and Keaton worlds were separate entities, meaning this cannot be right; however, the note in Barry’s book notes (Superman ’78, Batman ’89) which are the comics, which might mean that the comic adaptations and sequels, while being technically the same characters, are actually a separate reality – following on this logic, it makes it all make a bit more sense.

Personally, I always assumed the unmade Time Burton Death of Superman movie would have been the Burtonverse, especially since, at the time, Keaton was to appear as Batman at Superman’s funeral… I know this movie never happened but it is another stumbling block for the Reeves/Keaton universe theory.

For everyone’s sanity, we’ll not even talk about the fact that the Keaton Batmobile appeared in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman after it was stolen from Batman, implying Keaton may even be THAT world’s Batman (here).

Multiverses, baby, you just never know what you’re gonna get….

Source: THR