DC have already been major players in the film industry for a long time, and the comic book company’s animated output has been drawing widespread acclaim dating back almost 30 years, with HBO Max now offering yet another avenue to continue churning out both feature length and episodic content.
That clearly still isn’t enough for the boardroom, with a slew of recent announcements revealing plans for the DC brand to expand into podcasting. It was less than two weeks ago that Batman: Unburied was announced for Spotify with Winston Duke as the Caped Crusader and Jason Issacs as Alfred, but WarnerMedia’s streaming service is also getting into the game with Batman: The Audio Adventures, which is set to be an HBO Max exclusive.
Not content with playing James Gordon in Matt Reeves’ upcoming reboot, Jeffrey Wright will voice the Dark Knight himself in the episodic audio series, alongside John Leguizamo as the Riddler and Rosario Dawson as Catwoman, so there’s plenty of big names and star power attached to the project, which is written and directed by Dennis McNicholas.
McNicholas is a longtime Saturday Night Live veteran who was involved in the show in at least some capacity between 1995 and 2019, so it’s not a shock to hear that some SNL veterans are also onboard Batman: The Audio Adventures, although the roles voiced by Jason Sudeikis, Bobby Moynihan, Kenan Thompson, Heidi Gardner and Fred Armisen haven’t been confirmed as of yet.
Looking at the roster, the podcast may be poised to lean in a more comedic direction, and Wright’s gruff gravitas could turn out to be a masterstroke if it ends up turning out more like Adam West’s Batman than one of the more self-serious versions.