Batman is neither extremely realistic nor a colorful comic book version of the DC world’s greatest detective. In direct response to Christopher Nolan’s famous trilogy and Zack Snyder’s half-baked take on the character, Matt Reeves’ take on Bruce Wayne and his vigilante persona is gritty, slightly stylized, but its dark footprint remains firmly rooted in reality. According to him, that won’t change in the sequel.
In a chat with SFX Magazine (via Deadline ), the filmmaker, who is already deep into the writing process for Batman: Episode II , stressed the idea of playing with the comics’ rich mythology without going too far into the fantastical, as James Gunn’s rebooted DCU continuity will do in Batman: The Brave and the Bold anyway.
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“It was important to me to find a way to bring these pop icons, these well-known mythological characters, to life and make Gotham feel like a place in our world. We might push the story to the edge of fantasy, but we’ll never go into full fantasy. It should feel fairly grounded,” he explains. Don’t expect villains like Clayface or Poison Ivy from Arkham.
Sure, Reeves’ Gotham City largely looks and feels like the real thing from comic books and video games, but after seeing his take on the Riddler and the Penguin (who’s getting his own show this month), it’s hard to imagine that world straying far from reality. Overall, The Batman feels like a big David Fincher movie that happens to be set in Gotham City and has some explosive set pieces, and I don’t see how that’s going to change after it grossed nearly $800 million worldwide and received a ton of critical acclaim.
It has been rumored that Gentleman Ghost, a criminal who uses tricks and gadgets to make himself look like a ghost, will appear in the sequel. Another big question that has been circulating for a while is that Clayface will appear as a more grounded character, but some DC fans immediately imagined “Bartinson” fighting Clayman, which doesn’t fit with Reeves’ intentions here.
He spoke directly about the Gentleman Spectre situation: “It doesn’t mean you’re not going to see characters that people love. That’s what we want to do. Gentleman Spectre was probably a little too far out there for us to find a way to do, but there’s an interesting way to think about how we can take a character that might be a little bit fantastical and push it into reality and find a way to make sense of it.” Maybe we’ll get a more realistic Mr. Freeze? That would be ice
Batman: Episode 2 is currently scheduled to be released in theaters on October 2, 2026. The script is being completed and it is hoped that filming will begin next year.