With DC/Warners starting to ride high (finally) with the success of Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Shazam!, followed by the brilliance of Joker and today dropping a trailer for Birds of Prey and the Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, it looks like they are getting more confident too.
Finally!
Look, I acknowledge that Justice League was a disaster, but everything DC has put out so far has – in my opinion – been great, but the combined hammering from critics and ‘fans’ the studio was wavering for a while but no longer.
Strangely, that wavering and new confidence seems to have created the upcoming Matt Reeves Batman movie and the loss of Ben Affleck – a blessing and a curse.
With the news a few days ago that Jeffrey Wright is likely stepping in to play Commissioner Gordon and Jonah Hill looking set to play either Penguin of Riddler, it seems we have more news and details of the plan for the Dark Knight moving on after filming on the new movie begins first thing next year.
It seems that the plan early on is to set up the world of Batman, opening up the full Rogue’s Gallery and Bat-family in a fully realised Gotham City that connects to a bigger world beyond to be explored in a trilogy of movies and likely more beyond that.
The current rumour is that the Batgirl and Nightwing movies planned at Warners will spin-off from Reeves’ movie(s) with Dick Grayson (Robin and then Nightwing) likely introduced in the movie and, with Commissioner Gordon set to be – it seems – a big character, we may need his daughter, Barbera, who become Batgirl.
According to the new report from Forbes, Joker will likely be recast – being neither Jared Leto, the current Joker in the DCEU or Joaquin Pheonix, the Joker in the standalone movie – although, we know Joker (the Leto version) appears in Birds of Prey and, as much as I’m up for different versions of characters, I think three big screen Jokers is a bit of a stretch.
This all ties into reports from a week or so ago that had Kevin Smith report on his FatMan Beyond podcast, with co-host Marc Bernardin that the trilogy would be based on (my favourite Batman story) The Long Halloween from Tim Sale and Jeph Loeb.
Now, given what we know, this would make perfect sense as it sees Batman trying to solve a case over a year that sees him entwine with pretty much all his enemies from Joker to Calendar Man via Two-Face and Catwoman; it also features a young Batman and acts as a sequel to Batman: Year One.
Mind you, this isn’t news as we have heard before that this may be basis of Reeves’ movie before.
But yeah, so that’s the big news… a bigger Gotham universe starts here.
Thoughts?
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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