The Batman - Part II was originally supposed to be released on October 3, 2025, but as 2024 arrived with very few official updates amid potentially production-crippling strikes, speculation mounted that a delay may be inevitable, and the movie was officially pushed back almost a full year to October 2, 2026.
The lack of news over the past few months led to concern that Matt Reeves' sequel may have been cancelled altogether (not likely), but we had been assured that everything was still on track, and a very exciting rumor did the rounds today which claimed that The Batman - Part II was scheduled to begin filming next year - with Reeves shooting a third instalment back-to-back.
Given the amount of time that's been spent developing the sequel and previous comments Reeves made about expanding the "BatVerse," this seemed plausible enough, but DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn has now debunked the report via Threads.
Jeff Sneider also weighed-in, and it sounds like we might be getting some kind of official announcement regarding DC Studios' plans for this franchise before too long.
Right now, all we have to go on are rumors, and we recently heard that Logan and The Sandman actor Boyd Holbrook is in talks to play Harvey Dent/Two-Face. This could well be the case, but, again, it sounds like we're going to be waiting quite a while to find out for certain.
When the new DCU slate was announced, Gunn confirmed that Reeves' BatVerse will remain separate from the DCU, so this movie, along with Todd Phillips' Joker sequel, will be considered "Elseworlds" tales.
A new actor will don the cape and cowl for Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which will also feature a different take on Robin - The Caped Crusader's son, Damian Wayne.
Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Andy Serkis, Jeffrey Wright, and Colin Farrell are all expected to reprise their respective roles, and characters introduced in the Penguin Max spin-off series are also likely to appear. As far as official info goes, Reeves has stated that his sequel will continue this "epic crime saga," but that's about all we have to go on.
One rumor did claim that the story will be at least partially based on Geoff Johns' Batman: Earth One. Of course, the first film took a certain amount of inspiration from Vol. 1, so we assume the sequel would be more influenced by Volumes 2 and 3.
For those unfamiliar with the comic, Earth One takes place in the alternate continuity and features an updated and more realistic reinterpretation of the classic Batman origin and characters. Hush does not appear, but the later volumes do feature Clayface, Scarecrow, and a female take on Two-Face in Harvey Dent's twin sister Jessica.