No matter what the future holds for the DCU under the watch of James Gunn and Peter Safran, one thing the majority of fans can agree on is that Matt Reeves’ and Robert Pattinson’s The Batman should be left well alone as a self-contained pocket universe.
With that in mind, you can understand why there’s already murmurings of riot and rebellion on social media, after a new report from Variety offered that the new co-CEOs were considering streamlining the multiverse by bringing Reeves’ dark and dingy Gotham City into mainline canon.
“A well-placed source says Gunn and Safran are exploring the possibility of incorporating filmmaker Matt Reeves’ iteration of Batman with actor Robert Pattinson into their wider universe.”
Naturally, the mere mention of The Batman, its sequels, and HBO Max spinoffs being retroactively added to the same universe as Jason Momoa’s Aquaman, Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam, and even Jared Leto’s Joker hasn’t exactly gone down well with the DC diehards, who wouldn’t be surprised at this stage if Reeves ended up walking away altogether.
Kevin Feige may have made it look relatively easy, but building a coherent and connected cinematic universe is a mammoth undertaking packed full of moving parts that threaten to derail the entire operation should even the smallest one end up shifting out of place.
The Batman is fine where it is, and even trying to shoehorn it into a timeline where we’ve already got Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton under the cape and cowl is destined to cause more headaches than unabashed excitement.