Matt Reeves Offers Update on THE BATMAN, Its Script, and Says It's Definitely Not Year One

Director Matt Reeves recently showed up at the Television Critics Association event to promote his midseason Fox drama The Passage. While there, the filmmaker was bombarded with questions about The Batman, and he offered some updates on the script, Ben Affleck, the tone of the film, and those Year One rumors.

Turns out the director is almost done with the script and he says he's only got a couple more weeks to go on it.

"We are working on getting our draft [in] the next couple weeks. Right now, my head is totally into the script. Right now, I’m going to be leaving here to go back to work on the script."

I would sure love to read what he's got and see what he plans on doing with it. One thing is for sure, it's definitely not going to be based on the Year One comic arc like previously rumored. 

"We’re not doing any particular [comic]. Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One. It’s just exciting to be focused very specifically on a tale that is defining for him and very personal to him. Obviously we’re not doing an origin tale or anything like that. We’re doing a story that is definitively Batman though and trying to tell a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman."

He went on to reiterate that his Batman film will be a noir-driven story.

"I’ve talked about making it a very point of view noir-driven definitive Batman story in which he is investigating a particular case and that takes us out into the world of Gotham. I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favorite comics. Those all inform by osmosis. There’s no continuation of the Nolan films. It’s very much trying to find a way to do this as something that for me is going to be definitively Batman and new and cool."

Reeves is a great storyteller and I can't wait to see what he comes up with for this movie. It seems like he knows exactly what he wants to do with it. With all of the changes that have been going on at Warner Bros. since Reeves was hired to develop The Batman, some fans may be wondering if there have been any changes from his original plan from when he first signed on and the answer to that would be no. 

"From the beginning, what I had always spoken about with Warner Brothers and what I was excited about was being in the Batuniverse and really doing something within that sphere. That was always what it was going to be so in that way it hasn’t changed a lot since I first met with them. It’s very much the same thrust if that makes sense. A lot of things have happened since then but the movie, and why I’m excited about it, is it continues to be the same inspirations and excitement of what we talked about in the beginning."

When asked about the reports of Ben Affleck not being attached to the film, Reeves just responded with a very coy answer:

"There are ways in which all of this connects to DC, to the DC universe as well. We’re one piece of many pieces so I don’t want to comment on that except to say that I’m focused very specifically on this aspect of the DC world."

So, you can translate that to mean whatever you want it to mean. I still don't think that Affleck is going to be a part of the movie. 

Reeves goes on to say that the film project is on track to start shooting early next year. He says he's hoping for spring of 2019 or early summer. 

Source: /Film