After the franchise-killing cheesy efforts of the mid-1990s, the Batman franchise benefitted massively from filmmaker Christopher Nolan arriving to save the day with 2005's Batman Begins.
He'd follow that with The Dark Knight, one of the greatest comic book movies ever made, and wrapped the trilogy up with The Dark Knight Rises in 2012. That was a little more divisive, but its predecessor was always going to be a hard act to follow and it still successfully did the unthinkable by actually concluding Batman's story on screen.
Nolan was loosely attached to 2013's Man of Steel as an executive producer, leading fans to hope he might serve as the Kevin Feige of what was then the beginning of the DCEU (he dodged a bullet there).
Instead, the filmmaker has moved on to other projects, including this coming weekend's Oppenheimer.
Talking to HugoDécrypte, Nolan answered a quick series of yes-or-no questions, including whether he would ever direct another superhero movie after The Dark Knight Trilogy. To that, he simply said, "No."
This echoes previous comments from the director and we're not exactly surprised he won't be rushing to join James Gunn's DCU or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He told the Batman story he wanted and, presumably, isn't a big enough fan of any other characters to want to do the same for them.
Nolan's films, including Tenet, Dunkirk, Interstellar, Inception and The Dark Knight Trilogy, have earned more than $5 billion at the global box office and have been awarded 11 Oscars and 36 nominations, including two Best Picture nominations.
Written and directed by Nolan, Oppenheimer is an IMAX-shot epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.
Are you disappointed that the filmmaker won't be back to direct another comic book movie?