Holy script, Batman!
Superhero movie gets major rewrite
Batman begins again.
Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment are going back to the drawing board with their next solo Batman movie.
The Batman director Matt Reeves confirmed to MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast that he and WB/DC won’t use the script developed by Ben Affleck, Geoff Johns and Chris Terrio and will instead start over.
The confirmation of a new script puts into question whether Joe Manganiello will still be a part of the movie as the main villain, Deathstroke. Affleck hinted on social media last August that Deathstroke would be Batman’s main foe in his first solo Batman movie.
A battle against Deathstroke seemed at odds with all the Batman bits that have been seen in WB/ DC’s current cinematic universe.
For one, why establish that Robin/Jason Todd was killed by the Joker in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad if you’re not going to pit the Joker and Batman against each other in a future Bat-flick? And why show a dead Robin’s suit hanging in the batcave in memoriam if you’re not considering adapting the Red Hood storyline that saw Todd return from the dead to haunt Batman and the Joker as a vigilante?
One idea is for all the Robins to appear, including Dick Grayson (now Nightwing), Jason Todd (now the Red Hood), Tim Drake (now Red Robin) and Batman’s son conceived with Talia, the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, current Robin Damian Wayne.
Embracing the Robins would be a way for the next solo Batman films to stand out from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, which only hinted at Robin. A Red Hood theme would also give Reeves a chance to put more of a detective-like Batman on screen if Batman were investigating the identity of the Red Hood, as he did in the comics.
Of course, none of this could happen. Perhaps Manganiello’s Deathstroke is still on the table as the main villain. Maybe Reeves has no interest in Jared Leto’s Joker or the many Robins and will leave the branch of Batman’s sidekicks to be explored in the soon-to-bedeveloped Nightwing movie.