If, like me, you’ve been watching Lanterns, you’ll likely have noticed a sly little nod to the world of Batman, a world which, in the DCU at least, has yet to be opened up… heck, we haven’t even gotten a Batman cast yet.
But, this isn’t the first time the DCU has made a nod to Batman and, if this new report is right, we might be set to see Batman properly in the DCU in a project which, until now at least, was not meant to be attached to the DCU but was rather a standalone project.
Ok, so, so far in the DCU we’ve had several references made that point to Gotham City and Batman too. It’s now pretty much confirmed that unofficially/officially 2023’s Blue Beetle movie was the first movie set in the DCU and now, with Xolo Maridueña apparently set to play the character in Man of Tomorrow as well as a spinoff animated series, there’s not much arguing against its place in the DCU.
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In Blue Beetle, Batman and Bruce Wayne are both mentioned – Batman is actually called a fascist by the character of Uncle Rudy in the movie – but this is only the beginning of Batman/Gotham nods in the DCU.
In the first official chapter of the DCU, Creature Commandos, Batman is actually shown pursuing Dr Phosporus and now we have pretty solid nods to Gotham’s other major players.
In the first two episodes of Lanterns, we learn that Kelly MacDonald’s character, Sheriff Kate Kane, is from Gotham City. Then we hear her on the phone to someone in Gotham’s police force and she tells them she can’t share details on the case before commenting “say hi to Barb for me,” which is a very definite indication that she mean Barbara Gordon AKA Batgirl AKA Oracle and Barb is also Commissioner Jim Gordon’s daughter, meaning there’s a solid chance she’s on the phone to Gordon.
This is all pretty subtle but is also going a long way to carving out a Gotham City that, so far, is pretty much unseen.
By the way, the Sheriff’s surname, Kane, is a big name in Gotham too, with Kane being the surname of Bruce Wayne’s mother, Martha, before her marriage to Thomas Wayne. The Kanes are an influential name in Gotham and one of the Bat-Family, Batwoman, even carries the name under the mask – Kate Kane. So that’s unlikely to be a coincidence either.
Exciting new animated movie focusing on Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, Dynamic Duo, announced
But that may be set to change with 2028’s highly anticipated Dynamic Duo animated movie.
First announced in 2024, above, it was expected that the movie, featuring Robins Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, would be connected to the DCU, although later DC boss James Gunn said that the movie was, in fact, a standalone event movie:
At the recent Annecy Animation Festival, The Wrap saw some footage from the movie and described the plot as:
Dynamic Duo […] follows two would-be Robins – Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. Told from a teenager’s perspective, we watch as they goof around Gotham and are swayed by two very different adult figures in their lives – for Grayson, it’s Bruce Wayne aka Batman; for Jason Todd, it’s the villainous Red Hood. (At a certain point, Todd assumes the identity of the Red Hood, sometimes for good, sometimes for not-so-good.) There was one beautiful test shot of the Red Hood walking through a subway car; as “Dynamic Duo” director (and Swaybox founder and co-CEO) Arthur Mintz said, when Todd looks in the shiny, reflective Red Hood helmet, he sees himself. When Dick Grayson looks at the helmet, he sees something very different.
Swaybox is the animation house behind the movie, which is an exciting blend of puppetry, models and CGI – more on them in a minute.
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But while Gunn has reported that the movie isn’t connected to the DCU, we also know that things are always in flux until they hit the screen. And now, if a new rumour is true, it seems that the Dynamic Duo may, in fact, be a DCU story after all.
Scooper Mundosdadc reports that the movie is now part of the DCU and will feature Batman, setting up the long-in-development The Brave and the Bold, to be directed by IT’s Andrés Muschietti
Now, this isn’t set in stone and hasn’t, by their own admission, been confirmed by anyone at DC/Warner Bros but given the drip feed of Batman so far in the DCU and the continued belief that Gunn is reluctant to give us a new Batman until MAtt Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s The Batman Part II is done and dusted, then an appearance in this animated movie might be a good way to bring Batman into the wider DCU officially while not stepping on the toes of Pattinson’s Dark Knight.
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It would also likely mean that whoever plays Batman in Dynamic Duo will also be the live-action performer too, given Gunn’s previous assertion that the same actors will portray the characters in live-action, animation and games.
This rumour comes on the heels of a new report about Dynamic Duo’s animation house, Swaybox Studios, whose creatives ‘voted to join the crew union IATSE in an election that concluded on Tuesday. Eighty-four eligible workers at the New Orleans-based studio voted to join the union, while 35 voted against the move.\’
According to the report, Dynamic Duo will be made using Swaybox’s Momo Animation, ‘a blend of CGI animation, stop-motion animation and live-action performance using puppets’.
It was also revealed that the movie’s budget is $90m – that’s a large sum of money and maybe it’s been decided that if you’re going to spend that much, it might be better spent on a movie that’s part of a bigger tapestry like the DCU and may lead to sequels, spinoffs, or just other DCU projects.
As of now, this is still a rumour, but I know that when it was first announced, I believed this was a DCU project, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it turned out to be just that.
Either way, I cannot wait to see this movie.
Thoughts? I know you have them and I wanna hear ’em all.
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Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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