‘Batman’ Director Matt Reeves Talks ‘Penguin’, Which Had Some Spinoffs Canceled

Batman has been Matt Reeves’ hero since he was three years old.

The director behind the film Cloverfieldtwo Planet of the Apes Movies — and most importantly for this story — the 2022 film that will star Robert Pattinson The bat He has vivid memories of being sick in his childhood home on Long Island. He was bedridden with a high fever, and he imagined scenes from 1966. Batman A TV series starring Adam West was projected all over his room, like a wall projection. “Even though I was sick, I felt safe because Batman was on the ceiling,” Reeves, now 58, recalled. The Caped Crusader seemed to continue to care for Reeves, who years after moving with his family to Los Angeles pursued a career in film.

Reeves followed his childhood passion for amateur filmmaking with an 8mm camera to the University of Southern California in the 1980s. He concluded: George Lucas, father of star warsI went to USC, so he He had to go to the University of Southern California. He took a screenwriting course run by Jeph Loeb, the screenwriter of the 1985 film teenage wolf Who will continue to write beloved Batman comics like? Long Halloween, silence, Dark Victoryand The haunted knight.

Reeves never considered himself a writer. Writing was just the first step to making a movie. But Loeb changed that. “He had us go through this series of exercises,” Reeves says of Loeb. “We just started working on scripts. He came to me and said, ‘You can write, and I want you to take this really seriously.’”

Decades later, those words still stick with Reeves as he actively expands the designer world he launched. The bat In a number of projects, including drama series. The Penguin (It premiered on Max this week ahead of its HBO airdate on Sunday.) It seems stranger than fiction that the man who called Reeves’ writing “the guy whose comics now influenced the look of his own Gotham City” is the one who wrote the titles. “I realized they had a very cinematic sensibility,” Reeves says of Loeb’s comics. “I could say, ‘You’re doing a great job.’” godfather“Something like fantasy, but in the Batman universe. I get it.”

The batThe film follows the early days of Bruce Wayne, played by Pattinson, stalking the alleys of Gotham as he battles the Riddler (Paul Dano), giving the eponymous hero a street-level grit similar to cabby and French Contact. The Penguinwhich brings us back to Colin Farrell’s character Oz Cobb from that first film, who is also facial scar The story of a low-level gangster who exploits the power vacuum in the criminal underworld after the Riddler kills his boss, mobster Carmine Falcone (John Turturro).

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg (not to be confused with the Oz Club, the ice rink). The events of the eight-episode series The Penguinwhich occurs after one week. The batwill lead directly to the plot that is still under wraps. Batman Part IIThe film is currently scheduled to hit theaters on October 2, 2026. Farrell’s Oz is already set to return in this sequel, and Reeves and his producing partner Dylan Clark are considering producing more TV series related to the film.

“I always wanted to make sure that every movie that we did with Rob, that the central arc and emotional arc of the story was going to be Batman and Bruce,” Reeves explains. “And then when I was talking to Warner Bros. about signing on to do television, I said that what would be exciting for me is to cast characters that are [where] “There’s not enough room in the movie to cover their entire story and really delve into it. I want the whole movie to be a comprehensive crime epic for Batman.”

Hence the name of Reeves’ master plan: the Batman Epic Crime Saga, a series of interconnected films and TV series that depict different corners of the Dark Knight’s playing field. Some DC fans on the internet have already started using a more understandable acronym for the name. Is it BECS (“Batman Epic Crime Saga”)? Or is it TBECS (“Batman Epic Crime Saga”)?the “The problem is, I always like the full title,” Reeves comments. “It’s funny, we were doing something with the marketing, and they were like, ‘So the next chapter in the Batman saga…’ Like, ‘Oh, sad.’”

Reeves’ plans for The Batman Epic Crime Saga have changed dramatically over the years, as has the company he developed it for. In July 2020, at a time when Warner Bros. and HBO parent company WarnerMedia’s primary streaming platform was HBO Max, his first DC drama series debuted: a story set in the Gotham City Police Department, with Empire Boardwalk Reeves was set to begin writing the Batman film series, which would be set in the infamous Arkham Asylum. Over the years, as Discovery bought WarnerMedia to create Warner Bros. Discovery, and HBO Max rebranded itself as Max with a whole new pipeline to expand franchises across film and TV, several other DC projects, like the Wonder Twins and Batgirl movies, were canceled altogether. However, Reeves’ work survived the axe, even as DC Studios’ new co-chairs James Gunn and Peter Safran are laying out plans for a completely separate, connected entertainment universe. (Batman is looking forward again, perhaps?)

The Penguin“The Batman Epic Crime Saga, now helmed by executive producer and head writer Lauren LeFranc, is itself a perfect example of how the Batman Epic Crime Saga series has achieved what it is now,” Reeves explains. “In the process of figuring out what something is, it evolves. When I was describing what we wanted to do, I thought there could have been something, but in reality, there was something… [HBO CEO] Casey [Bloys] “He didn’t want us to be overly protective of the big characters, like we were just going to play them in the movies. It worked for him in that moment.” So, he came up with a modified idea about one of those big characters, Farrell’s Oz Cobb, a relatively minor character from The bat who played a crucial role in making the mystery misleading.

The bat The story ends at a point where the Riddler kills Carmine Falcone, the city’s biggest gang leader, and floods entire neighborhoods of Gotham by blowing up the sea wall. “I was describing [Bloys] “I wanted to make this Oz story the beginning of the next movie,” Reeves says. Batman Part II“I ended it on purpose [The Batman] In a place where [Zoe Kravitz’s] Selina says it’s going to be bloody. This is the most hopeful moment, but it’s also the most dangerous moment that Gotham has had in a long time. So Batman is going to be at the heart of this moment. When I was describing the beginning of this story of this underrated criminal who we all know is going to become the leader of the gang, Casey said, “Oh, this is the show! We want to do this.” who Displays.'”

While the GCPD series has not moved forward, parts of this treatment have been reworked. The PenguinLikewise, the Arkham show as originally conceived will not continue, but Reeves explains, “The things we talk about 1726859193 “They are evolved versions of these things. It’s not like this didn’t work. It’s like we need to evolve this. I would describe it as not something that didn’t work but something that’s still on its way to getting there.”

He’s not ready to reveal his next plans, and in fact, some of them depend on how the public responds to them. The PenguinStill, he feels confident that Bloys, as well as another senior figure, Sarah Aubrey, Max’s head of original programming, are still excited about what they can do together. And yes, he has a general guideline for what it will all look like.

First, Pattinson’s Batman will still be in the movies, at least for now. That’s why Reeves and his team decided not to include him at all in this first series; the series is about Oz, not Batman overcoming him. “That doesn’t mean there won’t be Batman or Bruce or anything like that,” Reeves said. [on a future series]“Reeves notes, ‘Lauren and I talked about: Do we want to find a way to somehow involve Rob in this show?’ But that was just an afterthought.”

Speaking on broader themes, he reflects on how Gotham City is perpetually corrupt.[It’s] “The idea that he’s going to appeal to people the way he does with Oz Cobb is the idea of ​​trying to capture the American dream, the dark side of the American dream,” he says. Every title set in this Gotham universe will offer a different shade of that dark American dream, but Reeves doesn’t want it to feel like homework. You don’t have to watch Oz Cobb and try to capture the American dream, the dark side of the American dream, he says. The bat To understand The Penguin No need to watch The Penguin To understand events Batman Part II.

“It’s more about the fact that it’s set in the same universe,” he continues. “If you watch the whole series, it’s an epic story and a meditation on corruption and why Gotham City became the way it is. When I talk about the other shows we’ve been talking about, what’s exciting is the thought of going down another alley that we haven’t been able to go down with The Penguin and The bat“.”

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Reeves is now preparing for his new film. He confirmed that he has finished writing the script, and everyone is preparing to start production next year. He also indicated that “there is a specific time frame.” Part Two “It will go beyond the first movie and the TV series,” he adds. “Oz has become one of the entry points into the movie. I can’t tell you where it goes from there, except that we’re very excited about it.”

The Batman of his childhood fantasies would be proud.