Last night, the news broke that Robert Pattinson is in talks to play the main villain, Scytale, in Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Messiah adaptation. With so much uncertainly surrounding Matt Reeves' The Batman sequel, this development understandably led to speculation that our return to Gotham City could be hit with another delay.
Though Nexus Point News believes that Pattinson's Dune commitment - should be sign on for the role, that is - would mean cameras wouldn't start rolling on The Batman 2 until 2026 at the earliest, Deadline's Justin Kroll does not expect production to be impacted.
Of course, this doesn't mean filming will definitely commence in 2025.
Last we heard, Reeves was planning to shoot The Batman sequel before the end of the year, but it doesn't sound like anything is set in stone just yet.
Late last year, we got the disappointing news that the movie had been hit with another delay and won't be arriving in theaters until October 1, 2027. DC Studios co-head James Gunn claimed that the almost year-long setback was simply down to the fact that the script hasn't been finished, but it sounds like the filmmaker has now, at the very least, cracked the overall story.
In a recent interview, Pattinson revealed that he does know what The Batman sequel will be about, while also addressing the news that the movie has been pushed into 2027.
“Matt is a very careful writer [laughs]... but I finally now know what it's about. It's very cool and I'm very excited.”
A lot of fans and industry insiders remain convinced that Pattinson will ultimately stay on as the DCU's Dark Knight for the planned The Brave and the Bold movie. Folding the Batverse into the DCU might make the most sense, if for no other reason than to avoid having two separate Batman franchises running alongside each other. By the time The Batman sequel actually hits theaters in 2027, there's sure to have been at least some progress on The Brave and The Bold.
Gunn and Peter Safran refuted the Pattinson rumors during the recent DCU slate update, although it might be telling that the Superman director wouldn't outright state that the Mickey 17 actor would not play Batman in The Brave and The Bold, simply noting that it was "very unlikely."
There have been rumors that Reeves might be dealing with some personal issues which prevented him from working on the script for a period of time. The filmmaker did mention that he had "a lot of stuff going on in my life" during January's Golden Globes, while also confirming that The Batman sequel is scheduled to begin filming this year.
"I can tell you that we're going to be shooting this year and that we're excited about it. I can't really tell you anything about it except that we're really excited. We're continuing the story. I'm really excited to be making it, to get our cast back together, to get new people involved, and we're really excited about it."
"What I'm excited about is I feel like we're doing something that absolutely continues where the story came from but is something that I hope people are going to be really surprised by," he added.