Despite the launch of DC Studios and the new DCU, Matt Reeves is seemingly proceeding with "The Batman Epic Crime Saga" as planned.
The Penguin premiered to rave reviews on HBO yesterday evening, while The Batman - Part II is just a couple of years away. Talking to Entertainment Weekly, the writer and director started by addressing the franchise's expansion from theaters to television.
"I always wanted to make sure that each of the movies that we did with Rob, that the central arc, the emotional arc of the story would be Batman and Bruce's," he explained. "Then when I was talking to Warner Bros. about signing for TV, I said what will be exciting to me is to take characters [where] there's not enough real estate in a movie to cover their story in full and to really dig into them."
"I want it to all be this sweeping Batman crime epic," Reeves added. "In the process of figuring out what something is, it evolves. When I was describing what it was that we wanted to do, I think [HBO CEO] Casey [Bloys] didn't want us to be too protective of the marquee characters, as if we were only going to do those in the movies. I got it right at that moment."
One project that seemingly evolved at least a couple of times was a series set in the GCPD revolving around a corrupt cop. We later heard it had ties to Arkham Asylum before it became a show set entirely in the institution the likes of The Joker and The Riddler call home.
"The things that we're talking about [now] are evolved versions of those things," Reeves acknowledged. "It's not like that just didn't work. It was like, we need to evolve this. I would describe it less as something that didn't work out and more as something that is still along a path toward arriving at its destination."
Reiterating that Batman doesn't appear in The Penguin, the filmmaker did admit that it's possible we'll see Robert Pattinson's Dark Knight on the small screen somewhere down the line.
"That's not to say that there would never be an appearance by Batman or Bruce or something like that [on a future series]," he noted. "Lauren and I did speak: Do we want to find a way to get Rob to somehow be in this show? But that was an afterthought."
As for where things stand with The Batman - Part II, Reeves confirmed the script is finished and that production begins next year.
"Oz does become one of the entry points into the movie. I can't tell you where it goes from there, except to say that we're super excited about it," he teased.
The first episode of The Penguin is now streaming on Max.