Another day and another round of DC Extended Universe rumors. Last week, Justice League found itself in the spotlight and this time, it’s Matt Reeves’ The Batman which is being placed under the microscope.
The beginning of 2017 saw the project go through quite a bit of trouble, with Ben Affleck departing the director’s chair and then Reeves doing the same, before eventually returning. For now, at least, the film seems to be out of the woods and as it inches closer to production, more and more plot details are beginning to surface. Admittedly, it’ll probably still be quite a while before we hear anything official, as Reeves is currently busy with War for the Planet of the Apes and hasn’t moved over to The Batman just yet, but if one thing’s for certain, it’s that he’s planning to make some big changes to the original script.
If you recall, Deathstroke was set to be the primary and quite possibly only villain here, but the Cloverfield director, who’s been given a large amount of creative control, wants to head down another route. Apparently, he’s hoping to include a whole bunch of different bad guys for Bats to face and if this latest round of rumors coming out of Reddit are to be believed, we could end up seeing both the Joker and Scarecrow in The Batman, alongside Deathstroke.
We advise taking this with a grain of salt, as we do with every DCEU rumor/leak, but it really doesn’t sound too far-fetched. For one, we heard just last week that the Clown Prince of Crime would have a role in Justice League, and if that’s true, then you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll be in the Caped Crusader’s solo outing, too. As for Scarecrow, that’s also easy to believe since we already know that the studio originally wanted him in Suicide Squad. Not only that, but according to the Reddit user, they’ve already started putting together designs for what he may look like.
Hoping for more information on all this, we reached out to our own source, and though they couldn’t confirm everything, here’s what they told us:
“I don’t know if the Joker stuff is true. Maybe, but I don’t know. Don’t be surprised if you see Scarecrow, though. They want him in the film. He’ll be very different from Nolan’s version, too.”
Again, given that Reeves hasn’t even officially begun work on The Batman, it’s hard to say how much of this will actually happen. Sure, the plan right now might be to include those three villains, but once production gets underway in earnest, things could drastically change. That being said, having Mr. J, Scarecrow and Deathstroke all show up would be very exciting, if handled properly. After all, we’ve seen what can happen when too many antagonists are thrown into a film just to appease fans, so Reeves and his team will definitely have to tread carefully if this is the route they decide to go.
As we said before, don’t expect to hear anything about this from the studio anytime soon. It sounds like The Batman won’t really kick into gear until the end of the year, at the earliest. And even then, you can bet that Warner Bros. will take it slowly with this one, ensuring they’ve got everything just perfect since there’s so much riding on the film.
Still, it’s always fun to speculate and if you have any theories of your own as to how Joker, Slade Wilson and Jonathan Crane may factor into things, feel free to share them in the usual place!