No major Hollywood blockbuster is made without a great deal of back-and-forth and compromise, which definitely applies to next week’s The Batman.
When director Matt Reeves first boarded the project, Ben Affleck was still set to play the title hero, and the movie would have acted as part of official DCEU canon. Instead, the Planet of the Apes filmmaker tore up the playbook and rebuilt the Dark Knight’s latest cinematic outing from the ground up, where it’ll stand apart from the rest of the franchise’s output.
Warner Bros. don’t exactly have the greatest of reputations for standing aside and letting the creative minds behind the studio’s superhero spectaculars operate with unbridled creative freedom, but Reeves revealed in a recent interview with Collider that The Batman is exactly the film he set out to make in the beginning.
“[WB] really leaned into everything, and I’ve had the support to do exact … I mean, I have to say, this movie is exactly the movie I wanted it to be, and they have supported me all the way through it.”
The early reactions to the reboot have only served to heighten anticipation, and with the review embargo lifting tomorrow ahead of Friday’s theatrical rollout, we’ll know within the next 24 hours or so if The Batman will be able to live up to the deafening buzz.