MOVIE NEWS – After the positive critical reception of the new Batman movie, it’s no surprise that many are already looking forward to the sequel.

We’ve been waiting for years for The Batman – a film that has gone through two wildly different iterations, with various directors behind the camera and potential stars in front of it. Yet, after all this waiting, here, at last, is Matt Reeves’ director’s cut – our review will be published as soon as the embargo expires on Monday – , with the DC Comics adaptation hitting cinemas next week. What Robert Pattinson brings to the role of the Dark Knight, we’ll all soon find out, and it turns out that Warner Bros. is wasting no time looking to the future, as they’re already in talks with Reeves about a possible sequel.

Reeves was recently on the red carpet for the film’s premiere and spoke to The Independent about the need to expand the universe beyond the current first film. The Cloverfield director pointed out that HBO Max already has a few spin-offs in the works, and interestingly, he said that he was already in talks with the studio about a Batman movie sequel:

“I really believe in what we’ve done, and I’d be very excited if we could tell more stories…”

“We’re already telling other stories in the streaming space, we’re doing stuff on HBO Max, we’re doing a Penguin series with Colin [Farrell] that’s going to be super cool. And we’re working on other things, but we’ve already started talking about another movie.”

A (mostly) foregone conclusion

It’s no coincidence that there’s so much talk of a sequel before it even hits cinemas. Batman is by far the most valuable superhero Warner Bros. has, and this version of the franchise offers the opportunity to focus very specifically on that character and the world he inhabits, namely Gotham City. This film is a departure from the larger DCEU, which still has Ben Affleck as the prominent Bruce Wayne, even if he’s hanging up the cape after the premiere of The Flash (Michael Keaton is rumoured to be reprising the role). There is no Superman in this mundane version of the universe (at least not yet). Pattinson – or Battinson as he’s now called, haha – fights criminals such as the Zodiac Killer-inspired version of Rébus. It looks like this will be very different from the so-called Snyderverse.

All that said, there’s almost no universe in which Warner Bros. would allow this to be a one-off. We know that Reeves has further plans, and we know that Pattinson is in on the sequel. Preliminary projections suggest the film will succeed, and the studio seems awfully confident in what they have. Unless something catastrophic happens, a sequel was always going to be expected. Yes, it’s early days, but there doesn’t seem to be much chance of disaster until the opening weekend, thankfully.

Batman hits theatres on March 4, 2022.

Source: YouTube