Since taking the reins on Fox’s lucrative Apes franchise three years ago, writer-director Matt Reeves has delivered two expertly crafted and indeed visually stunning blockbusters in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and the imminent War For the Planet of the Apes.
Balancing style with deep, provocative substance, each instalment arguably stands head and fuzzy shoulders above the CG-laden competition, and already moviegoers and DC fans, in particular, are beginning to look toward The Batman with hushed excitement.
After some deliberation, not to mention Ben Affleck’s decision to vacate the director’s chair – don’t worry, he’s still attached to headline as Bruce Wayne – Matt Reeves climbed aboard Warner’s spinoff, resulting in a total script overhaul and a delay to production. Word is that WB is now targeting a start date in 2018, after Reeves and writing partner Mark Bomback rewrote the screenplay “from the ground up.” And now that the preliminary story is finally beginning to fall into place, the director has been comparing his take on the Caped Crusader to a “noir-driven” detective movie.
And though Reeves is well conditioned to operating in Hollywood’s blockbuster scene thanks to his experience on Fox’s Apes franchise, the director recently spoke about his transition to the DCEU, including what it’s like to work on a movie that shares connective tissue with a number of other DC-related tentpoles – Justice League, for instance.
In a new interview with Yahoo, Matt Reeves once again touched base on his approach to Gotham’s Dark Knight, along with Bats’ parallels to the great Caesar.
What studios are willing to make at the moment is a very, very narrow band of films. What I discovered is that this genre has the potential to be about something more. You can use the metaphors of the genre to talk about (a lot)…I think that the metaphors of both of the franchises (Batman and Apes) enable you to tell stories that have deep emotional resonance. That’s actually what excites me about it. It’s interesting because I was obsessed with both as a child, and yet there is something potentially very adult about what you can explore under the cover of that fantasy. That is what draws me to it, and that’s what I’m excited about.
Further in the piece, the conversation then veered toward Christopher Nolan and his celebrated Dark Knight Trilogy. It’s a difficult act to follow, but here, Reeves revealed that he took inspiration from the way in which Nolan tackled the genre.
What I admire in what (Nolan) does is that, despite being a filmmaker in an enormous system, his perspective comes through. That to me was very exciting, it’s always exciting when you see a film of his because of that. That’s what I feel like I’ve been trying to do, it’s trying to allow a perspective to come through despite the fact that we’re in this very large studio movie world.
The Batman is expected to swoop into production sometime next year ahead of an expected release in 2019. Justice League, meanwhile, opens November 17th of this year.
