UPDATE: James Gunn has taken to social media and called this information “entirely untrue.”
UPDATE 2: Matt Reeves has also now shared a comment backing up James Gunn.
The original story follows.
It appears that Robert Pattinson’s version of Batman may not be so lonely after all according to a new report.
In a new report from Variety about all of the challenges facing James Gunn and Peter Safran as they try to steer the new DC Universe, one point, in particular, lept out. The report states that a ‘well-placed source’ has shared that Gunn and Safran are studying the possibility of bringing Matt Reeves’ version of Batman into the wider universe.
Since the inception of Reeves’ version of Batman, Warner Bros. Pictures has made it clear that the series would be its own thing, separate from the wider world of heroes. How bringing him into the main DC Universe would work is unknown for now, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to explain away the absence of other heroes in The Batman. Up until the end of the film, the issues in Gotham could very easily be seen as ‘street level’ crimes as opposed to something like Superman would fly in and fix.
The article states that some of the other issues currently facing Gunn & Safran currently is the belt-tightening happening around all of Warner Bros. Discovery. Before Gunn & Safran were installed in their new roles, it fell to Warner Bros. co-chief Pam Abdy to inform James Wan he would need to trim down his reshoot budget for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. The mainline budget had already ballooned to $205 million during principal photography.
Gunn & Safran are also facing the fact that there are four DC films scheduled for 2023 that were produced before they took over. Should they want to add anything to those films to hook into their future plans, that would be at a cost of millions of dollars for additional photography. And that paints them into a corner about announcing anything coming in the future because consumers could view those four movies as non-essential viewing as everything will change anyway.
It has been quite a ride already for the new co-chairs of DC Studios, and it doesn’t appear it will be smoothing out any time soon.
