What’s going on with Batman and Brave & the Bold, his first movie in this growing DC universe? According to James Gunn, things are going well, but not so well that they’ve found an actor for the superhero just yet.
Gunn previously mentioned 1923 on a recent Peacemaker podcast episode, prompting speculation that he was scouting out Sklenar. But he told THR he just likes the show and creator Taylor Sheridan’s work—he considers Sklenar “great” on it, but he’s watching “mostly for fun, definitely not because I need to find a Batman.” He did, however, single out Julia Schlaepfer, who plays Sklernar’s wife on the show: “She’s just so fantastic that I suggested her for something recently.”
As for Brave & the Bold, Gunn revealed to IGN the script is in a pretty good place. But when it comes to its co-lead Damian Wayne, “plenty of things are in flux. Some things have changed on what his situation is with his parentage and all that stuff.” When asked for clarification on what exactly that means, like who Damian’s parents are or if he’ll still be in the movie, he just said “you have to wait and see exactly what’s happening.”
Cryptic, but at least we know the movie still exists. Hopefully, we learn who our new Batman is, and what else to expect from Brave & the Bold, sooner rather than later.
There are a lot of superheroes running around the DC universe at any given time, and it often causes some headaches for its villains. If you’re a bad guy in that universe, how do you tackle that problem in 2024? With some evil super-robots.
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In DC’s big summer event Absolute Power (from the World’s Finest team of Mark Waid and Dan Mora, Amanda Waller takes center stage its big central villain. After forming a Trinity of Evil with the Brainiac Queen and Zur-En-Arrh (a split Batman personality inside an android named Failsafe), Waller finds a way to take powers from the Justice League and other metahumans to pass on to their Amazo androids. And in looking to get their powers back, Batman leads the now-depowered Leaguers in a resistance movement where they’ve all got some spiffy new threads, which you can see below.
Image: Dan Mora/DC Comics
While Waid and Mora tackle the main four-part story, there’ll be the standard deluge of event tie-ins, including the Absolute Power: Task Force VII miniseries focusing on the souped-up Amazos as they go hunting for superpowers. Foro the first three issues releasing in July, Leah Williams and Caitlin Yarsky kick things off with Last Son, who goes after the Shazam family; Depth Charge targets Aquaman’s entourage in John Layman and Max Raynor’s one-shot; and Jeremy Adams and Marco Santucci spin a tale of Jadestone pursuing the JSA. Finally, Waller gets her own origin story in a three-part miniseries from John Ridley and Alitha Martinez that digs into her longstanding beef with metahumans.
Absolute Power will begin with a Ground Zero recap issue on June 25—from writers Waid, Nicole Maines, Joshua Williamson and Chip Zdarsky, and art by Gleb Melnikov, V. Ken Marion, and Skylar Patridge—followed by its first issue on July 3.
Earlier in the week, My Dad the Bounty Hunter creator Patrick Harpin and Yuhki Demers, a visual artist on Sony Animation’s Spider-Verse films, revealed their concept art for an animated Batman Beyond movie they’re trying to get made. They’re both fully aware nothing might come of this, and talks are still happening. But it didn’t stop said art from going viral, both because it looks really cool, and also because it’s Batman Beyond, a fan-favorite character who’s always felt like he’s within spitting distance of a big bat-break.
If you work in a creative field, you likely have to pitch something to your boss before actually starting on it. That’s particularly true in animation, and that’s doubtful to change anytime soon. But there’s something ugly, for lack of a better word, in seeing Harpin and Demers have to publicly rally for support to prove their project’s “worthy” in this way to WB. It wasn’t that long ago that we learned the studio’s executives, led by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, are likely going to cancel Coyote vs. Acmewithout really considering any of the deals offered to them, or having actually seen the film. The people in charge of WB seem very anti-art in a way that makes this all come off as rather cruel, especially when folks have been so vocal about their love for Batman Beyond over the years.
Legacy superheroes have become so widespread nowadays, but Terry McGinnis was an early example of that working to great success. Separate from their love of Batman: The Animated Series, fans have had an affection for 1999-2001 animated series BatmanBeyond and Terry’s exploits as the Batman of Neo-Gotham. It wasn’t just that the show was offering a new take on the Dark Knight, it was also really good and not just coasting off the novelty of a teenager in a high-tech Batsuit. And while he briefly showed up in Justice League Unlimited, DC didn’t make any active moves to continue Terry’s story, and largely closed the book on him after JLU revealed he was Bruce’s son.
Comics-wise, Terry’s actually been doing fairly well for himself in the past decade, where he was weaved into the prime DC universe. In his recent solo runs, he’s crossed paths with more recent Batman mainstays like Damian Wayne and the Court of Owls, and he’s now at the point where he’s on his own now that Bruce is dead. Yet even with that, WB has never tried to give him a bigger presence outside of the comics: a live-acton Batman Beyond movie was junked several years ago, much like an animated one rumored in 2019. He hasn’t been revived via the animated movies that WB likes to put out three or four of every year, and he doesn’t even have a video game presence beyond being costumes for Bruce in the Lego or Arkham games.
Outside of comics, WB has always handled Batman’s supporting cast oddly. Sometimes it puts embargoes on specific characters so there can’t be multiple versions; sometimes other characters can headline shows for about half a decade or be a supporting player in the story of another, bigger Batman character. The studio constantly overcomplicates itself for no real reason, and the same is true here—it loves Batman to death, and DC’s often been at its best when animated. Harpin and Demers’ hypothetical movie checks both those boxes, and gives audiences something they’ve never seen in theaters before: Batman being a detective in the cyberpunk future is a cool idea! And again, folks have been clamoring for more Terry for years.
Image: Warner Bros. Animation
In a sane universe, a Batman Beyond movie in a Spider-Verse art style would probably be out by now. But this WB is trying to burn money and stall for time ahead of a likely buyout, so we’re watching an interesting idea by a pair of creators more than eager to work on it be held hostage. Batman Beyond isn’t owed this just because Harpin and Demers asked, or even because he’s been around for 25 years. What he’s owed is a legitimate chance to have something with him move forward with people who care about the property at the helm. But the focus on the bottom line means WB will be making moves that are more dystopian than the actual dystopia of Gotham City 2049.
