When director Matt Reeves boarded The Batman, his objective was to make a grounded and gritty film noir mystery set in Gotham City. With The Batman spin-off series The Penguin premiering later this month and The Batman Part II currently being written, Reeves has teased his plans for the sequel and how much more of this grounded reality fans can expect.
The Batman took place in Batman’s second year as a crimefighter when Bruce Wayne was more obsessed with his Batman persona and striking fear into Gotham’s criminal element than he was maintaining anything else in his life.
That proved to be detrimental to Batman as the central mystery focused on a conspiracy that went from the top of both of Gotham’s political and criminal organizations all the way down, even tying his family’s philanthropy and legacy into its twisted purpose. In an interview with SFX, Reeves said The Batman Part II will further explore Gotham’s corruption and whether or not it can truly be healed.
“Part II is going to dig into the epic story about deeper corruption,” Reeves said, “and it goes into places that he couldn’t anticipate in the first one. The seeds of where this goes are all in the first movie, and it expands in a way that will show you aspects of the character you never got to see. Batman is constantly battling these forces. But those forces can’t be entirely exorcised. So the next movie delves deeper into that.”
With The Penguin ready to premiere soon Reeves spoke about how the series will connect with Batman’s next mystery, hinting at the overarching story in has Batman saga.
“The Penguin is the entry point. There are details that actually connect right into the way the next movie begins, and the way that Oz enters that world as we hand the baton back to Batman, and Batman is on another case.”
One of the most notable aspects to The Batman was the grounded and gritty realism of its world, harkening back to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy as opposed to the DCEU’s Batman where he lived in a world full of superpowered and alien heroes and villains. In fact, when The Batman premiered in 2022 it was the first time in a decade audiences had been treated to a solo-Batman film without the more fantastical villains. Don’t expect Reeves to break his grounded approach for the sequel though.
“What was important to me was to find a way to take these pop icons, these mythical characters that everybody knows, and translate it so that Gotham feels like a place in our world,” he explained. “We might push to the edge of the fantastical but we would never go into full fantastical. It’s meant to feel quite grounded. It doesn’t mean that you won’t see characters that people love. That’s exactly what we want to do. Gentleman Ghost [in Batman: Caped Crusader, the Amazon animated series on which Reeves is a producer] is probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do, but there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that.”
The Batman Part II currently has a release date of October 2nd, 2026 so it is still a long way away for audiences to see it. Reeves confirmed production will begin filming next year as they are putting the finishing touches on the script now.
“The plan is to shoot next year, and we’re finishing up the script now. Colin will be part of the movie. We’ve shared [the script] as we’ve been going along with DC and the studio and they’re super excited.”
Robert Pattinson and Zoë Kravitz will reprise their roles as Batman and Catwoman. Presumably other cast members from The Batman will join them and Farrell in the sequel, but we have to wait and see who else will return.
What do you think of Reeves’ comments? Are you loving his grounded take in The Batman and The Penguin or would you like to see Batman fight more of his fantastic and superpowered enemies? Let us know on our social channels at @FlickeringMyth…
The Penguin premieres on HBO on September 19th.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
