Big news for Batman fans: writer-director Matt Reeves has, in fact, delivered a new script for his sequel The Batman: Part II — but it wasn’t necessarily an easy road for the filmmaker to get to this point.
The Batman 2, which starts filming early next year, currently has a release date of October 1, 2027. If it does come out then, The Batman 2 will arrive five-and-a-half years after The Batman. Indeed, Reeves has said he set out to make a trilogy of Batman films, and as of last year that plan was still on.
“It’s been a journey that is taking longer than I would’ve wanted for a lot of reasons, a lot of personal reasons,” Reeves told The Hollywood Reporter on the Emmys red carpet this weekend. “But [the] most important reason is getting it to a place where I just felt like it was the best script we could possibly write.”
He also noted that the film is set to shoot next year now that the script is in. “We’re getting ready. We’re basically entering prep,” Reeves added. “We’ll be making the movie in the spring.”
Reeves also spoke about star Robert Pattinson’s response to the script — which, believe it or not, was mailed to him in a privacy pouch complete with coded entry (that Pattinson almost couldn’t open, mind you) to keep all of the exciting details completely under wraps.
“He’s Batman, and if he doesn’t like it, not good,” the Cloverfield director said of Pattinson’s feelings on the script. “I was super excited. I thought that he really would [like it] because the things that it does for his character, for Batman and for Bruce, have never been done before in this way. I had a feeling that he would respond in this way, but the fact that he did was incredibly encouraging.”
He added, “Obviously because of what the first movie was and what this movie is, which is so much a detective story, the idea of trying to protect the secrets of the movie is super important because it’s a mystery. It would be an extra level of heartbreak if that part of it started getting out.”
Reeves also spoke about where the HBO’s spinoff series The Penguin stands in terms of Season 2. “We’re in discussions. [Showrunner] Lauren [Lefranc] is thinking hard and we’re talking, so we’ll see,” he told Variety at the Emmys. “We love the show, and we think our cast is so incredible. The work that Lauren and the writers did was incredible. Our passion was in it, but never in our wildest dreams could we imagine it would have been received in the way that it was.”
The series took home a solid nine awards between the Primetime Emmys broadcast and the Creative Arts Emmys ceremony a week prior — including Best Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology series for Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone.
Meanwhile, James Gunn has his own plans for the DC Universe’s Batman, who he has insisted won’t be played by Robert Pattinson. While promoting the rebooted DCU kickstarter Superman earlier this year, Gunn admitted: “Batman’s my biggest issue in all of DC right now.”
Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
