Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” will be released on June 25, 2021, Warner Bros. Pictures announced on Wednesday.
Ben Affleck, who played the Caped Crusader in “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” “Suicide Squad,” and “Justice League,” is not expected to star in the film. Reeves and Dylan Clark are producing.
Reeves says the film won’t be an origin story in the vein of Frank Miller’s beloved “Year One” series, but will rather be a “defining” and “very personal” story about the Dark Knight.
“Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One,” Reeves said at a Television Critics Association panel, according to Slash Film. “It’s just exciting to be focused very specifically on a tale that is defining for him and very personal to him.”
“Obviously, we’re not doing an origin tale or anything like that. We’re doing a story that is definitively Batman though, and trying to tell a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman,” added Reeves.
Reeves also said that his Batman will connect to the DC Universe, unlike Christopher Nolan’s standalone Dark Knight trilogy.
“There are ways in which all of this connects to DC, to the DC universe as well,” Reeves said. “We’re one piece of many pieces so I don’t want to comment on that except to say that I’m focused very specifically on this aspect of the DC world.”
And — shocker — it will be noir-inspired.
“I’ve talked about making it a very point of view noir-driven definitive Batman story in which he is investigating a particular case and that takes us out into the world of Gotham,” Reeves said.