It’s been quite the year for DC Comics’ campaign on the big screen; not only did they acquire some heavyweight talent in James Gunn and Peter Safran as the newly-branded DC Universe‘s answer to Marvel’s Kevin Feige, but Dwayne Johnson’s decade-long passion project, Black Adam, has been hitting a homerun at the box office, further signaling an exciting new direction for some of history’s most beloved comic book characters.
But the high point of the year for the aforementioned campaign had nothing to do with the DCU at all; indeed, Matt Reeves’ The Batman, the opening chapter of an entirely separate canon centering on Gotham City and the many character studies it can be home to, grossed nearly $800 million at the box office while getting the thumbs up from critics and fans alike.
One may think that having such a tried-and-true iteration of Batman join the DCU would score big points with just about everyone. On the contrary, however, the idea is an egregiously contentious one, as captured in one such thread in r/DC_Cinematic.
The original poster made a lengthy case for Robert Pattinson’s Batman to enter the DCU fold, even factoring in the well-documented reluctance that Reeves boasts, but the DCU faithful continued to make their own hardline stances known.
Others conceded that it would be in the DCU’s best interest to bring in Reeves and Pattinson, but the caveat to that is the obstacle of getting the two of them to agree to such a thing.
Without a doubt, Gunn and Safran would have to dream up the deal of a lifetime to get Reeves on board with the DCU, and even then, with Reeves’ own shared universe continuing to gear up for expansion with every passing day, some of the most prominent incentives won’t apply to the director anyway.
The next project out of the Reevesverse looks to be the in-development miniseries The Penguin, which will be distributed by HBO Max on a yet-unknown release date.
