With Man Of Steel flying onto the big screen in June and Justice League planned to hit theaters in 2015, the next step for Warner Bros. will be spin-off films for the rest of the League’s characters. All signs are pointing to the first of those films being a Batman reboot, but not a ton of concrete information has been revealed. Today though, we have word that the first person being considered by Warner to take on what has been tentatively-titled The Batman, is Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky.
Aronofsky is currently working on completing Noah, and this report says that The Batman would be his next film. This wouldn’t be Aronofsky’s first experience with the character either, as he was considered to direct the reboot of the Caped Crusader after Batman and Robin. He worked on a script (which ended up being too violent) and was actually the one to bring Christian Bale into the picture. We included him on our list of 10 filmmakers who could tackle the reboot last fall and we still think he would be a great choice.
A couple weeks ago there was more talk that the new Batman film would be based on the popular Arkham video games. Those rumours have been around since Christopher Nolan’s trilogy ended, but the same DC source that brings the Aronofsky news has also said that Arkham will indeed be the inspiration for the next film. That means if this report about Aronofsky is true, then the Arkham-based reboot is also probably true.
The source also said that Justice League, despite Warner’s plans for a 2015 release, could still be pushed to 2016. The news about the studio waiting on the results of Man Of Steel before pursuing Justice League any further makes it seem even more likely that the film will be given a later release date. If the studio does stick with 2015, the current plan is a June 19th release. Regardless of which year Justice League comes out, it’s looking as if The Batman will come our way no sooner than 2017.
In other Justice League news, David Goyer, the writer who worked on the stories for all three films in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and on the screenplay for Man Of Steel, is reportedly looking over Will Beall’s draft of the Justice League script. It’s unknown whether he’s simply consulting or if he’s doing actual polishing, but this news sparks another interesting possibility. Because Nolan said he wants nothing to do with Justice League (and presumably the rest of the character films to follow) a significant tone shift for Batman has been predicted by some. However, if Goyer is working on Justice League, that increases the possibility of him hanging around the DC characters longer and influencing the Caped Crusader’s reboot. Goyer writing and Aronofsky directing would likely produce an even darker and grittier Batman than Nolan ever would’ve considered.
A lot to think about here regarding Batman and Justice League, so head to the comments section and share your thoughts on all the recent developments.
