There are few modern animated TV shows as influential and as beloved as “Batman: The Animated Series,” which makes the debut of Prime Video’s “Batman: Caped Crusader,” its spiritual successor, one of the television events of the year.
The original series, which aired for 85 episodes beginning in 1993, was created by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski and introduced a darker, more sophisticated tone to the afterschool animation programming block. “Batman: The Animated Series” introduced the world to Harley Quinn, a character that is now arguably one of the most popular DC characters, having been portrayed by Margot Robbie, Kaley Cuoco and Lady Gaga (in the upcoming “Joker” sequel). It also inspired the theatrical animated feature “Batman: Mask of the Phantasm,” largely considered one of the great Batman movies ever — animated or otherwise.
So you can see why Timm would hesitate to revisit his animated masterpiece with a new show.
Secret Origins
The animator was approached, in his estimation, four or five years ago with the idea of doing more episodes of “The Animated Series.” Warner Bros. was gearing up for the launch of their own direct-to-consumer streaming service, eventually named HBO Max and now known simply as Max, and executives interested in revisiting a number of classic properties.
“They said, ‘Hey, how would you feel about going back and making some more ‘B:TAS’ episodes?’ And I’m like, ‘Nah, we’d been there, we’d done that.’ I wasn’t interested in just revisiting that world,” Timm explained.
But as Timm noodled on the idea with executive producer James Tucker, they first discussed a possible “Justice League” animated series. (Timm developed an equally striking, if not quite as influential, animated “Justice League” that aired in the early 2000s and began another show, “Justice League: Unlimited.” Both took place in the same universe as “Batman: The Animated Series.”) “That was more of an open-ended concept that we could incorporate the entire DC canon in it, instead of doing just another Joker story, or just another Harley story or whatever,” Timm said.
But all those discussions circled right back to Batman. Tucker would say to Timm, “Well, if you didn’t want to do another ‘B:TAS’ straight up, wasn’t there some things that you didn’t get to do back in the day that you would have liked to have done?” The answer, of course, was yes. Timm thought back to the early production bible for the original series, and things that they had planned but were never able to incorporate — the idea of Bruce Wayne as much more of a loner, “kind of grim and more like the Shadow or the Avenger,” both pulpy characters that gained popularity thanks to radio serials. Timm remembered that once “Batman: The Animated Series” was sold, it “became something different.”
Timm was back to being intrigued. “The more we started talking about it, it was like, ‘Okay, that’s interesting. That’s interesting.’ And then we got really excited about it,” Timm said. “But then nothing really happened for a year or two.” (Tucker remembers the conversation happening in the spring of 2020.)
Some time passed, until Timm got a call from Sam Register and Peter Gerardi, animation executives at Warner Bros., who told Timm that J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves were interested in executive producing a “Batman” show with them. It led to a Zoom conversation with Abrams and Reeves, where Timm gave them his pitch: “I wanted to blend the atmospherics of Universal horror movies and the drama of Warner Bros. gangster movies and the action of Republic serials and mix it all together with a lot of film noir on top.” From that point forward, Timm said it was a done deal.
“Batman: Caped Crusader” was born.
A More Mature Batman
Since the show was being developed at HBO, there was an agreement that it should be more intense than its 1990s counterpart. “The people that we were dealing with, they were very comfortable with us going much more adult, without necessarily being super violent,” Timm said. The executives agreed with Timm that the show should be “at the same level of ‘The Mandalorian’ or the ‘Harry Potter’ movies or the Marvel movies, where they’re ostensibly for all ages, but people can die and there can be some mild swearing.” Timm remembered having to jump through many hoops in the original show “just to avoid having anybody die, as if death isn’t a part of life.” “Just being able to have somebody die, even if even if it wasn’t blood splattering all over the place, that just opens up different story avenues that we didn’t have before. That was freeing,” Timm said.
There are a number of elements in “Batman: Caped Crusader” that would have been forbidden in the earlier show — there’s a same-sex relationship (“Every time we had two characters kiss, even if they were two heterosexual people, just having them touch lips together was always a big thing”) and fully commenting on (and depicting) police brutality. In this iteration, crooked cop Harvey Bullock (voiced by John DiMaggio) is a murderous crook.
“That was us basically messing with the established norms,” Timm explained. “Bullock has been this lovable rogue since basically his inception in the comics. When he first came out you thought he was a really a bad cop. But then they quickly said, ‘No, no, he’s good. And he likes Gordon and Gordon likes him.’ That’s been the default version of Bullock to the point where in the ‘Gotham’ show, they hired a good-looking guy to play him.” Bullock couldn’t even be a slob anymore. Timm had the idea of teaming him with the Arnold Flass (voiced by Gary Anthony Williams), a character from Frank Miller’s “Batman: Year One” comic book. “We can have a salt-and-pepper pair of crooked cops and Bullock is the muscle and Flass is the brains and the much more dangerous of the two.” They would also thread through almost all of the show’s storylines, which Timm said was a nod to Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels.
This added maturity (really complexity) really sets “Batman: Caped Crusader” apart from its forebearer. People get stabbed and shot. Villains actually die. And Bruce Wayne is even more of a psychologically tormented figure, sometimes feeling like a ghost that haunts his own story. It’s bracing and brilliant and feels just as fresh as “Batman: The Animated Series” did oh-so-long ago.
Some Setbacks
Abrams and Reeves, the director of “The Batman” and its upcoming sequel, were upfront with Timm and the team when they joined the project. Timm was initially nervous that they would be asked to make an animated version of Reeves’ “Batman” movie, which wasn’t the case. “Early on they said, ‘You know what, we don’t want to influence you on how to make the show, we’ll do whatever we can to help make that happen’” Timm said. Both Reeves and Abrams had great notes on the pilot, before handing off the day-to-day responsibilities. “They’ve been really great and very supportive of the show,” Timm said.
But even with these powerful allies, “Batman: Caped Crusader” faced an uncertain future when Warner Bros. announced that the show, developed for HBO Max, wouldn’t be on the company’s streaming platform after all.
“We were in the middle of the process. We were like, do we still make this?” said Tucker.
“We were almost finished writing the scripts for Season 1. We were far enough along that we were deeply in love with it,” Timm said. He maintains that the show was never canceled, but that Warner Bros. allowed them to take the series elsewhere. But at the time Diedrich Bader, who voices Harvey Dent/Two-Face, tweeted that the show was no more. “I had to text him and say ‘no, it’s OK, we’re still making the show. We’re shopping it around. It’s not the end of the world,’ ” Timm said. Still, he said that the experience was “not fun,” although he is thankful that Warner Bros. didn’t “outright say, ‘Nope, canceled, we’re going to write it off.’”
And he’s more thankful that Amazon picked it up, as they did with “Merry Little Batman,” another animated Batman film (an accompanying series, “Bat-Family,” is coming soon to Prime Video too). “They’ve been a great partner in making the show,” Timm said of Amazon.
When Amazon rescued the series, they also elongated its lifespan, ordering two seasons, for a total of 20 episodes (so far). “We’re still working on the scripts and starting to record,” Timm said about season 2. “We’ve got a long way to go.” Still, if the numbers on the initial batch of “Batman: Caped Crusader” exceed expectations, Timm and Tucker are hopeful that there will be additional seasons. “I’m assuming if the numbers are good, they’ll probably want more,” Timm said. It used to be, Timm said, that no matter how well you were doing they could pull the plug (usually for the purposes of endless syndication), but he’s heartened by shows like “Harley Quinn,” the adult animated series, which debuts its fifth season later this year.
“We’re only doing 10 episodes a pop, so it’s not like we’re bored yet,” Tucker said. Timm then added: “We don’t have to bring Superman in yet to keep it interesting.” Well, not yet.
All episodes of “Batman: Caped Crusader” are now streaming on Prime Video.
