The first teaser poster for Prime Video's Batman: Caped Crusader has been released today (via Toonado.com) and it features the show's Dark Knight keeping a watchful eye over 1940s Gotham City.
It's a striking piece of imagery and that's fitting for a take on Batman which draws inspiration from the hero's earliest comic book adventures. With any luck, this means we're getting a teaser trailer sooner rather than later as the long-delayed show's August premiere is fast approaching.
Original plans called for Batman: Caped Crusader to premiere on Max, but a series of cost-cutting measures by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav saw it offloaded - along with a handful of other animated projects, including Merry Little Batman - to Amazon.
The series will see Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series) and James Tucker (Batman: The Brave and the Bold) collaborate for a series which will put a very different spin on its titular Caped Crusader.
"I’m a huge film noir fan, and that’s pretty much what we do exclusively in this," Tucker recently said of the series which takes place in the 1940s. "It’s such a period piece. I mean, I’ve done all kinds of Batman. I’ve worked on shows with different takes on Batman. No one has quite done this one for animation yet."
Timm, meanwhile, saw the chance to take Batman down a darker path and jumped at it. "There were certain things that I had in my mind back in the early ’90s for the original Batman: The Animated Series that I didn’t get to do," he explained. "I wanted to do this emotionally messed-up version of Batman, who’s extremely aloof and almost inhuman."
Despite that, Batman: Caped Crusader will not be TV-MA. As Timm put it, "We are aiming this show at the same age group that watches Harry Potter movies or Marvel movies."
Confirmed Batman: Caped Crusader cast members include Midnight Mass star Hamish Linklater as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Jamie Chung (Sucker Punch) as Harley Quinn, Christina Ricci (Wednesday) as Catwoman, and Diedrich Bader (The Drew Carey Show) as Harvey Dent.
Other actors lending their voices to the series in currently undisclosed roles include Minnie Driver, Eric Morgan Stuart, Michelle C. Bonilla, Krystal Joy Brown, John DiMaggio, McKenna Grace, Jason Watkins, Paul Scheer, Reid Scott, Gary Anthony Williams, Dan Donohue, David Krumholtz, Haley Joel Osment, and Toby Stephens.
Batman: Caped Crusader premieres on Prime Video on August 1.