“The Batman” director Matt Reeves on “The Penguin” and canceled spin-offs

Batman has been Matt Reeves’ hero since he was three years old.

The filmmaker behind it Cloverfieldtwo Planet of the Apes Movies and – more importantly for this story – the 2022 Robert Pattinson-led film The Batman has vivid memories of being ill at his parents' home on Long Island. He was bedridden with a high fever and imagined scenes from the 1966s. Batman Television shows starring Adam West played throughout his room, as if they were projections on walls. “Even though I was sick, I felt safe because Batman was hanging from the ceiling,” recalls Reeves, now 58. It seems that DC's Caped Crusader continued to watch over Reeves, who years later, after moving to Los Angeles with his family, pursued a film career.

Reeves followed his childhood passion of making amateur films with an 8-millimeter camera all the way to the University of Southern California in the 1980s. He argued: George Lucas, the father of star Warswent to USC, so He had to go to USC. He enrolled in a screenwriting course taught by Jeph Loeb, one of the writers of Teen Wolf who later wrote popular Batman comics, such as The long Halloween, silence, Dark VictoryAnd Ghost Knight.

Reeves never saw himself as a writer. Writing was just the first step to making a film. Loeb changed that. “He had us do this series of exercises,” Reeves says of Loeb. “We were just starting to work on screenplays. He came to me and said, 'You can write, and I want you to take this really seriously.'”

Decades later, these words are still in Reeves' mind as he actively works to expand the stylized world he began The Batman in a number of projects, including drama series The Penguin (which premiered on Max this week before airing on HBO this Sunday). It feels stranger than fiction that the man who christened Reeves' writing is the same person whose comics now influence the look of his own version of Gotham City. “I could see that they had such a cinematic sensibility,” Reeves says of Loeb's comic title. “I could say, 'You're making a Godfather-type thing, but within the Batman world. I get it.'”

The Batmanabout the early days of Pattinson's Bruce Wayne, who roams the alleys of Gotham while wrestling with the Riddler (Paul Dano), gave the title hero a street strength in the style of Taxi driver And The French Connection. The Penguinwhich brings back Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb from the first film is also a Scarface The story is about a small-time gangster who takes advantage of a power vacuum in the criminal underworld after the Riddler kills his boss, mobster Carmine Falcone (John Turturro).

And that's just the tip of the iceberg (not to be confused with Oz's club, the Iceberg Lounge). The events of the eight-part The Penguinwhich one week after The Batmanleads directly into the still secret plot of Batman – Part IIwhich is currently scheduled to hit theaters on October 2, 2026. Farrell's Oz is also set to return as a sequel. And Reeves and his production partner Dylan Clark are considering additional accompanying television series.

“I always wanted to make sure that in each of the films we made with Rob, the central story arc, the emotional arc of the story came from Batman and Bruce,” Reeves explains. “Then when I spoke to Warner Bros. about working together on television, I said it would be exciting for me to take on characters that [where] There's not enough space in one film to cover their story completely and really delve deeper into it. I want this to be a complete Batman crime epic.”

Hence Reeves's name for this master plan: The Batman Epic Crime Saga, a series of interconnected films and shows depicting different corners of the Dark Knight's playground. Some DC fans online are already toying with a catchier acronym for the name. Is it BECS (“Batman Epic Crime Saga”)? Is it TBECS (“The Batman Epic Crime Saga)? “The problem is, I always like the full title,” Reeves comments. “It's funny, we did a thing with the marketing and they were like, 'So the next chapter in the Batman saga…' I was like, 'Oh, sad.'”

Reeves' plans for The Batman Epic Crime Saga have changed considerably over the years, as has the company he was developing them for. In July 2020, at a time when Warner Bros. and HBO's parent company WarnerMedia's main streaming platform was HBO Max, his first DC drama series was released: a story set in the Gotham City Police Department, with Boardwalk Empire Creator Terence Winter worked with him and Clark on development. There have also been reports in the Hollywood industry of plans to make another Bat-related series set in the infamous Arkham Asylum. Over the years, as Discovery bought WarnerMedia to form the now-merged Warner Bros. Discovery, and HBO Max rebranded itself as Max and had a whole new pipeline to expand franchises to cinema and television, many other DC projects, like the Wonder Twins and Batgirl films, were abandoned entirely. Reeves' work survived the cull, however, while James Gunn and Peter Safran, the two new heads of DC Studios, are making plans for an entirely separate, connected entertainment universe. (Perhaps Batman is on the lookout again?)

The Penguinwhich is now being led by showrunner and head writer Lauren LeFranc, is itself a perfect example of how the Batman Epic Crime Saga got to the state it is in. “As we figure out what something is, it evolves,” Reeves explains. “When I described what we wanted to do, I think [HBO CEO] Casey [Bloys] didn't want us to be too protective of the main characters, as if we were only doing them in the movies. At that moment I really got it.” So he proposed a revised concept for one of those main characters, Farrell's Oz Cobb, a relatively small character from The Batman who played a crucial role in solving the mystery.

The Batman ended in a place where the Riddler murders Carmine Falcone, the city's biggest mafia boss, and floods entire districts of Gotham by blowing up the seawall. “I described [Bloys] how I wanted to make this story for Oz as the beginning of the next film,” Reeves mentions Batman – Part II“I intentionally ended [The Batman] in a place where [Zoe Kravitz’s] Selena says it's going to be bloody. This is the moment of greatest hope, but also the most dangerous moment Gotham has seen in a long time. So Batman is going to be in the middle of it. When I described the beginning of the story of this underrated criminal who we all know is going to be the boss, Casey said, “Oh, that's the show! We want The show.'”

While the GCPD series did not progress, parts of this treatment were revised for The PenguinLikewise, the Arkham show as originally planned will not take place, but Reeves clarifies: “The things we are talking about, 1726854374 are more advanced versions of those things. It's not that it just didn't work. It was more like we needed to evolve it. I would describe it less as something that didn't work and more as something that is still on its way to its goal.”

He is not yet ready to reveal his next plans, and in truth a lot depends on how the audience reacts to The PenguinStill, he's confident that Bloys and another key figure, Sarah Aubrey, head of Max Original Programming, remain excited about what else they can do together. And yes, he has general guidelines for what all that will be.

First, Pattinson's Batman will remain in the movies, at least for now. That's why Reeves and his team decided not to include him in this first series at all; the show is Oz's story, which should not be overshadowed by the Bat. “That's not to say there would never be an appearance by Batman or Bruce or anything like that. [on a future series]”Reeves notes. “Lauren and I talked: Do we want to find a way to get Rob on the show somehow? But that was more of a side gig.”

He addresses broader issues and muses that Gotham is constantly corrupt.[It’s] the idea that it draws people in like Oz Cobb and this idea of ​​conquering the American dream, the dark side of the American dream,” he says. Each title set in this Gotham world will offer a different facet of that dark American dream, but Reeves doesn't want it to feel like homework. You don't have to watch The Batman to understand The Penguin and you don't have to watch The Penguin to understand the events Batman – Part II.

“It's more that it takes place in the same world,” he continues. “When you look at the whole thing, it's an epic narrative and a meditation on corruption and why Gotham is the way it is. When I talk about the other shows we want to do, it's exciting to think about taking a different path that we can take with The Penguin And The Batman.”

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Reeves is currently preparing for the next film sequel. The script is finished, he confirms, and everyone is getting ready to start production next year. He hints that “there is a certain amount of time” Part II will pick up after the first film and television series. “Oz will be one of the entry points into the film,” he adds. “I can't tell you where it goes from there, other than we're super excited about it.”

The Batman of his childhood fantasies would be proud.