Matt Reeves, the co-writer/director of The Batman, indicated that he wants to turn the solo DC film into a full-fledged shared world.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Reeves expressed his desire to create a “Batverse.” “What I really wanted this movie to do is create a Batverse…,” he explained. “You don’t do a story and go, ‘This is Chapter 1’ because you might not get to do Chapter 2. So, the story had to stand on its own. But the thing about it is that the Bat world is so rich with character that as you’re starting to come to an end, you can already start thinking about the next thing. Because the idea, of course, is that Gotham’s story never ends.”
For HBO Max, Reeves is presently working on two spinoff series set in the same universe as The Batman. One of these episodes, provisionally dubbed Gotham PD, will center on the Gotham City Police Department, as the name implies. The title of the other program has yet to be determined, but it has been announced that one of The Batman’s supporting villains, The Penguin, would star in the film, with Colin Farrell repeating his role as the villain.
Ben Affleck was tapped to helm and star in a spin-off of The Batman that was based in the DC Extended Universe before Reeves joined the project. According to reports, Affleck’s version of the picture was more of a straight-up action movie, with cameos from a number of other high-profile DCEU superheroes.
Following Affleck‘s departure, The Batman was entirely revamped, and its ties to the DCEU were severed. Despite this, Reeves praised Affleck‘s initial idea for the movie. “It was a fully valid perspective on the topic,” Reeves stated of the lost script,”I just felt that I was not going to be their guy because having read it, I thought, ‘Wow, I don’t know if I can find my emotional way into this version.’”
The Batman will be released in theaters on March 4th and on HBO Max on April 19th.
