The Dark Knight Rises concluded Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy on a bold note, with Bruce Wayne finding a happy ending with Selina Kyle and moving away from Gotham (unless Alfred was dreaming, of course). In his stead, orphan cop John Blake was shown to have discovered the Batcave, which told us he was an adaptation of Robin and would go on to protect the city as Nightwing.
After Rises first came out, there was a lot of talk about how much everyone wanted to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt lead a spinoff movie about Blake’s exploits, but Nolan’s wish to keep his trilogy self-contained and Warner Bros.’ desire to create a wide-ranging shared universe – the DCEU – put paid to that idea. In some other universe out there, though, a Nightwing movie actually happened and the above fan-made trailer from YouTube channel Smasher gives us as a taste of what it would’ve been like.
Of course, how things actually stand with the Bat-franchise is that Robert Pattinson’s about to star as the Caped Crusader in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, which is in production now. This is set to give us another younger, less-experienced Bruce, but there are reportedly plans to introduce the extended Bat-family in the sequels. This could lead to spinoffs for Nightwing and Batgirl, especially as DCEU projects for these heroes have been in the works for years.
The LEGO Batman Movie‘s Chris McKay was attached to Nightwing back in 2017, but things went cold on that when he boarded another movie in 2018. Presumably, part of the reason why is because the franchise was being restructured, what with Ben Affleck vacating his role. Who knows exactly what form it’ll take in the end, then, but all the signs are pointing to us getting a proper Nightwing film eventually. And hopefully it’ll prove to be worth the wait.