New revelations concerning the future of the The Batman seem all the more impressive. The new heads of DC Studios, James Gunn and Peter Safran, have reportedly been working hard to find a fresh and more cohesive direction for the future DCU movie and TV slate. When they were given the difficult job of running DC Studios under Warner Bros. Discovery, they inherited a franchise with a complicated history, including numerous sequels still in the works with links to Zack Snyder’s projects as well as several standalone titles with no associations to the overarching Justice League narrative. Matt Reeves’ The Batman is one of those standalone titles.
A new report states that Black Adam and his widely-reported return, his future as Superman is once again in limbo (via THR). Despite all this jaw-dropping news, the future of Matt Reeves’ Batman universe still seems to be safe, including The Batman 2 as well as TV spinoffs such as The Penguin.
The Batman's Universe Is More Impressive With The DCU's Struggles
Before Peter Safran and James Gunn took over, the DCU had been struggling for a while. It hadn’t been able to figure out a cohesive plan and has tried to reboot the whole franchise quite a few times. Black Adam was supposed to be a fresh start, for instance, but failed to make the necessary splash at the box office despite Dwayne Johnson’s star power and Cavill’s Superman cameo. When David Zaslav was announced as the head of Warner Bros. Discovery, he reiterated how important DC’s trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman was to the future of the DCEU, but now Wonder Woman 3 seems to be dead in the water, and Superman’s future is uncertain.
Despite these DCU troubles and more, The Batman managed to be a big hit, even though it focused more on Batman’s detective background, even when it replaced Ben Affleck with Robert Pattinson, and even with a fiercely different tone and feel for Gotham. The movie was so successful, in fact, that it has spawned a sequel and numerous spinoffs, with more likely to be announced in the future. The Batman universe that Reeves launched has somehow managed to stay the course and keep a hold of its future in a time of leadership changes and massive structural overhauls, which is an incredibly impressive feat and gives hope for the future.
Why The Batman's Universe Is So Well Planned While The DCU Struggles
The reason The Batman has done so well despite the larger DCU’s struggles is because of the vision that Matt Reeves had for his adaptation. It has always been its own distinct outing. A new Batman/Bruce Wayne meant Reeves could develop his world without the baggage of what came before. It was a completely fresh start. There was no overarching narrative that the movie needed to contend with, and it was allowed to provide an update to Batman’s mythos and focus on what makes Batman a great and compelling hero for Gotham, not for the wider world.
Similarly, Joker had this advantage as well, it was its own self-contained story, an origin separate from what the wider DCU and the continued Snyderverse were doing, allowing it to carve out its own legacy and find its footing. Like The Batman, there’s been little mention of anything changing where Joker’s sequel is concerned. If the DCU was to take one lesson from The Batman, allowing each distinct franchise to flourish without the pressure of needing to conform to one all-consuming storyline could be its saving grace in the future.
