The Batman is currently scheduled to release in the US on March 4, 2022. Initially, the plan was for Ben Affleck to reprise his DCEU role as Batman in a solo-film. While Affleck was originally supposed to act, direct, and write the 2022 film, Matt Reeves (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) took over the project when Affleck chose to vacate the director’s chair, and the actor would eventually leave the film entirely in January, 2019.

Plot

Reeves made the creative decision to focus The Batman on the younger years, casting Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne and setting the film in his sophomore year of vigilantism. In following Batman’s first few years as the Gotham City vigilante, we will see him face off against the very classic group of villains we all love to hate — Catwoman (played by Zoë Kravitz), Riddler (played by Paul Dano), and Penguin (played by Colin Farrell).

Statement

In an interview with AnOther, Kravitz said that it really felt like she was making an indie film while on set. She mentions not only her director’s creative vision, but the delayed filming due to COVID, which resulted in them taking a full year to wrap on The Batman.

“Sometimes with really big movies, it can feel like you’re just a puppet and part of this big machine. This felt like an independent movie in the way that there was real heart and soul and thought being put into the process and into every scene. It was incredibly collaborative. Matt’s very specific. It took him a year to make this because of Covid. We were in this bubble, really in this world, and it was an incredible experience. To spend a year of your life, and it’s very physically demanding … I had to be in very specific shape, and there’s a pandemic going on. I’m being zipped into a catsuit every day at 7am, working 12-hour days and then coming home and working out. It was intense.”

There has been mixed reviews about how the cape and cowl has been handled since Christopher Nolan’s iteration of Gotham City’s protector. Kravitz’s words not only increase the hype for this origin story-esque take on Batman, but they also give us some promising insight on what Matt Reeve’s has planned in 2022.

For more entertainment news, read what the producer of James Bond has to say in the search for a new 007.

Photo via DC/Warner Bros.