By the time The Flash arrives in November 2022, provided that it actually makes that release date given the tortured development process so far, we’ll have seen four different actors play Batman on the big screen in the space of a decade. Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, Michael Keaton and Robert Pattinson will have all suited up as the Dark Knight, but Warner Bros. also seem intent to give the iconic superhero’s roster of supporting players their own share of the spotlight.
Todd Phillips’ Joker may have raked in over a billion dollars at the box office, but the rest of the studio’s attempts have been nowhere near as successful. Chris McKay’s Nightwing was officially announced and then fell completely off the radar, while Batgirl lost Joss Whedon and swiftly sank back into development hell. However, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones that told us Affleck would return in The Flash weeks before it was confirmed – that a solo movie for Batwing is in the early planning stages.
A recent addition to comic book canon, Batwing debuted in 2011 as Congolese police officer David Zavimbe, but according to our intel, the big screen version of the character will be based on his successor Luke Fox, the son of regular Dark Knight ally Lucius. The standalone project will exist independently of the DCEU much like Joker and The Batman, and takes place in a world where Bruce Wayne is dead, with Luke becoming Gotham City’s protector in the hopes of emulating his mentor and eventually becoming his permanent successor.
Warner Bros. have already made it clear that Joker is far from the last spinoff set in the DC Universe that they plan on doing, and the suits will surely be hoping that Batwing makes it a lot further along the development process than either Nightwing or Batgirl have managed so far.
