Following the success of his 2022 blockbuster The Batman, prolific screenwriter, producer, and director Matt Reeves has set his sights on expanding on the film’s worldbuilding and is in the process of building up creative teams for more cinematic projects focused on choice members of Batman's expansive collection of foes.
The Batman acts as a reboot of the pre-existing Batman film franchise. In the first of a proposed trilogy of new cinematic features, The Batman follows a more relatively inexperienced caped crusader as he grapples with Gotham City's pervasive corruption while in pursuit of The Riddler, a maniacal serial killer that has been targeting the city’s richest and most powerful members. The Batman received massive praise and had a splendid cinematic debut, with many fans and critics praising the gritty and intriguing nature of the film.
The immense success of The Batman bought Reeves a lot of goodwill at the company, with many signs pointing to Warner Bros fully betting on Reeves' vision to steer it to more cinematic success. A report from The Hollywood Reporter, which covered a lot of backstage news and recent developments at Warner Bros., has also revealed that Reeves has been meeting with potential screenwriting and directorial candidates to helm cinematic projects based on a mix of well-known and more obscure Batman villains in the near future. While all potential projects are still in the first stages of formation, some names that have been thrown out include characters ranging from the relatively popular Scarecrow and Clayface all the way to far less popular characters like Professor Pyg.
Reeves, who recently inked an overall deal at Warner Bros in view of a sequel of The Batman, envisions these potential projects as an expansion of the world that his latest work inhabits. Separate from the mainline DCEU, there is a lot of potential for a smaller extended universe that preserves the tone and scale of The Batman while introducing audiences to large parts of the Batman mythos that has historically only been available in the comic books. With a respectable gross north of $700 million worldwide for The Batman, there is little doubt that Reeves' ideas will be taken seriously by the higher-ups at Warner Bros.
An HBO Max series focused on notable Batman villain and crime lord The Penguin is already well on its way to kick off principal photography in early 2023, and it will certainly be impacted for the better by Reeves' treatment in The Batman. This effect might be of interest to Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who has been looking for some sort of big-picture leadership for the DCEU, which has recently been in the press cycle more for controversy than its theatrical success and was hit heavily in the recent merger that saw Zaslav take the top position. With the role seemingly not attracting a lot of takers, Reeves' aspirations may lead to a subtle addition of responsibilities within WB.
Reeves' interesting choice of source material for The Batman goes a long way to inspire fan confidence in his understanding and ability to draw on the right kinds of characterizations for the myriad villains that might eventually appear in his potentially realized Batman extended cinematic universe. However, with his potential role in the big picture at Warner Bros. Discovery, it remains to be seen if Reeves will be able to give these upcoming projects the same masterful treatment that made The Batman such a resounding success.
The Batman is available for streaming on HBO Max.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter