DC reveals Batman Half 2 launch and extra Batman motion pictures in Section 1

Warner Bros.’ new slate of films and TV primarily based on DC Comics is expansive, from a deep house journey with Supergirl to deep swamp horror with Swamp Factor. There’s even a brand new Batman film, starring a brand new Batman and Robin!

However which will go away followers of 2022 blockbuster The Batman questioning the place that leaves the movie’s sequel and beforehand introduced spinoff TV exhibits, and followers of Joker questioning about its sequel. The reply is it’s they’re nonetheless there — simply elsewhere. Or, to be particular: Elseworld.

What’s Courageous and the Daring, WB’s new Batman film?

Picture: Grant Morrison, Andy Kubert/DC Comics

In line with Warner Bros.’ announcement — heralded by director and co-chairperson of DC Movies, James Gunn — Courageous and the Daring would be the first official DCU Batman film of the studio’s new route for DC Comics diversifications.

The flick will likely be an “uncommon father-son story” primarily based on Grant Morrison’s run on the comics Batman and Batman & Robin with Frank Quitely and different artists. Their time on Batman books was marked by wild new supervillains just like the cannibalistic Flamingo and the plastic surgery-obsessed Professor Pyg — and Batman’s discovery that his off once more on once more flame, Talia al Ghul, had been hiding the existence of their son, Damian, from him.

Within the comics, Talia raised Damian as a spoiled murderer, solely dumping him in Batman’s lap on his eleventh birthday, inflicting no finish of battle as Damian got here to phrases together with his father’s “no killing” rule. It’s actually one of many angles the movie might discover, to not point out the motion potentialities you get when Batman’s child momma is the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul and chief of the ninja-assassin consortium often known as the League of Shadows.

As but, Courageous and the Daring doesn’t have a launch date, or any creatives hooked up, however we are able to anticipate it to hit theaters no ahead of July 2025, when Gunn’s Superman: Legacy kicks off the route of the brand new DC Movies interconnected universe.

Is The Batman 2 nonetheless occurring? Joker 2?

Photograph: Jonathan Olley/Warner Bros.

Joker: Folie à Deux, the reportedly musical sequel to 2019’s Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Woman Gaga, began manufacturing in 2022, and stays slated to premiere on Oct. 4, 2024.

Matt Reeves’ Batman movie franchise remains to be transferring forward as properly. Until we hear in any other case, it’s secure to imagine that its spinoff TV collection, The Penguin, can also be nonetheless occurring, in addition to the 2 untitled The Batman TV spinoffs in growth, about Arkham Asylum and the Gotham Metropolis Police division. All three exhibits had been reportedly nonetheless in growth in late October 2022, shortly after Warner Bros. introduced James Gunn’s involvement in redirecting the DC Movies subdivision.

Robert Pattinson is confirmed to return in The Batman – Half II, with Matt Reeves within the director’s chair once more. There isn’t a agency data on who else from the forged would return (though the actors of key characters, like Zoë Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, and Andy Serkis are nearly actually on contract for sequels), and solely hypothesis on who the villain could be, as Pattinson and Reeves have been completely joyful to talk to reporters about their favourite Batman villains.

So there will likely be two Batman franchises??

Picture: Frank Quitely, Alex Sinclair/DC Comics

It appears like… yeah. Courageous and the Daring will characterize the core route for Batman within the movie DC Universe, whereas The Batman and its sequels and spinoffs will likely be categorised as a “DC Elseworlds” story, a tried and true designation from the pages of DC Comics itself.

Again within the late Nineteen Eighties, when DC Comics did its personal franchise-wide reboot that flattened all of the parallel settings of the DCU right into a single setting, any story that featured DC Comics characters however was inconceivable to sq. with that timeline was labeled an “Elseworlds” story. For instance, the very first Elseworlds story, Gotham by Gaslight, was a reimagining of Batman as a Victorian-era hero on the hunt for Jack the Ripper.

The brand new DC Movies slate is borrowing Elseworlds in a lot the identical scenario — a rebirth of priorities that also leaves house think about the alternative ways a superhero’s story might be informed. The “DC Elseworlds” slate will embody The Batman Half II, Joker: Folie à Deux, the present animated collection Teen Titans Go!, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ long-gestating Superman film. And that’s a wholesome swathe of alternate universe drama for every kind of followers.