Earlier this week, a judge ruled that Warner Bros. did not steal the plot for The Batman from a writer who came up with a story about the Dark Knight three decades earlier.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer decided that writer Christopher Wozniak actually infringed DC Comics' copyrights after they employed him as a freelance artist in 1990 when he wrote "The Ultimate Riddle," later retitled "The Blind Man's Hat."
Wozniak has claimed The Batman was a copy of his story but Engelmayer says it's "The Blind Man's Hat" which intentionally and without consent lifted material from the DC Universe and is "rife" with Batman characters and plot elements.
The court documents have now been made public and they include a declaration from The Batman director Matt Reeves.
It's revealed that the filmmaker was first approached in January 2017 about directing a version of the movie starring Ben Affleck. "Warner Bros. sent me a pre-existing screenplay written by a writer named Chris Terrio and the writer and director Ben Affleck," Reeves says. "Upon reading it, I determined that the story and resulting film was not a project that I felt I wanted to do."
He adds that, "[If Warner Bros.] wanted to use this pre-existing script, it should use another director. I also told them an idea I had for an original Batman story that I conceived: a Batman detective story where solving the case led to discovering something unexpectedly personal for Batman. Warner Bros. liked the idea and hired me to make The Batman."
Reeves then reveals, "I did not use any material from the previous script written by Chris Terrio or any other material provided by Warner Bros. other than the Batman characters and universe."
Elsewhere in the declaration, The Batman helmer addresses the notes he received from the studio and how that impacted which gadgets he did and didn't use in the story.
It's interesting to get these insights into the making of the 2022 blockbuster and surprising to hear that Terrio and Affleck's version of The Batman is one Reeves had absolutely no interest in making. That was expected to revolve around the Caped Crusader battling Deathstroke after the assassin learned the hero's secret identity.
Affleck later walked away from the role of Batman but ended up returning to the DCEU to shoot cameos in The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.
You can read Reeves' full statement in the X post below.