The DC Animated Universe of the 90s and 00s gave us many great additions to the Bat-mythos. Two of them, Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya, are already part of the DCEU. Another major fan favorite though is Terry McGinnis, the star of beloved animated series Batman Beyond.
The idea of a retired Bruce Wayne taking on a protege and training him up to protect a futuristic Gotham City is such a cinematic one that fans have been dying to see a movie based on the show for years. And though Warner Bros. continues to keep quiet on if such a thing will ever come to fruition, there’ve been whispers of something being in the works for a while now and today, to give us a taste of what it may look like, we’ve got this awesome fan-made trailer, courtesy of YouTube creator Billy Crammer.
As you can see above, it brings Michael Keaton back as his version of the Dark Knight. In an interesting piece of casting for McGinnis though, Crammer has gone with Dylan O’Brien. The choice is probably mostly down to footage from 2017’s American Assassin, starring Keaton and O’Brien, looking vaguely like Bruce training Terry, but the actor isn’t a million miles away from how we’d like to see Terry portrayed in live-action, either.
As Kevin Smith once said, a Batman Beyond movie with Keaton would surely be a shoe-in to be a $1 billion earner, so it’s honestly strange that one isn’t in the works. Keaton clearly loves being part of the superhero genre, too, hence his appearances in the Marvel/Sony Spider-Verse, so there’s a good chance he could sign up to reprise the role he last played in 1992. Technology has also reached a stage where you could do really interesting things realizing a sci-fi Gotham. And DC would definitely beat Marvel to the punch with this one, as there’s no cyberpunk-inspired flick in the MCU.
It’s such a no-brainer that it feels like DC must be slowly cooking up a Batman Beyond project behind the scenes. So maybe an announcement will finally come that a live-action BB movie is on its way sooner rather than later. Until then, though, passionate fan-made efforts like this trailer – or the fan art above – will have to scratch that itch.