Rumors relating to The Batman director Matt Reeves' plans for his highly-anticipated sequel have been doing the rounds since shortly after the movie was announced, and we finally have an official update on the plot of The Batman Part II straight from the filmmaker himself.
Reeves shared a story outline during a new interview with SFX Magazine, confirming that the movie will once again feature Batman investigating a mystery. He doesn't reveal anything too significant beyond this, but his comments have ignited a lot of speculation online.
"We've shared [the script] as we've been going along with DC, and they're super excited," he tells the mag. "It's going to dig into the epic story about deeper corruption and it goes into places [Bruce Wayne] couldn't even anticipate in the first one.
The seeds of where this goes are all in the first movie & it expands in a way that will show you aspects of the character you never got to see. Batman is constantly battling these forces. But those forces can’t be entirely exorcised. So the next movie delves deeper into that. "
Deeper corruption in Gotham City? Sounds like The Dark Knight might be meeting the Court of Owls!
This shadowy sect was introduced in the pages of writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo's New 52 run as an organization of the wealthiest and most influential citizens in Gotham. The group operated in secret and remained unknown among the city's population, aside from some urban legends centered around their reputation for grisly assassinations carried out by indoctrinated agents known as Talons.
There are other possibilities for the sequel's main antagonist(s), of course, but when it comes to certain villains the Caped Crusader may or may not be going up against, Reeves did indicate that certain "fantastical" characters - including the likes of Gentleman Ghost - are off the table.
"What was important to me was to find a way to take these pop icons, these mythic characters that everybody knows, and translate it so that Gotham feels like a place in our world," he added. "We might push to the edge of fantastical, but we would never go into full fantastical. It's meant to feel quite grounded.
It doesn’t mean that you won’t see characters that people love. That’s exactly what we want to do. Gentleman Ghost is probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do, but there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that.”
Co-writer Mattson Tomlin recently confirmed reports that cameras are set to begin rolling in 2025.
"It's shooting next year. We're gearing up, and I will say that the bar just couldn't be higher," Tomlin told ScreenRant.
"It's the sequel to the first one," he continued. "But also, Matt [Reeves] is like no other. In the five years now that I've been working with him as closely as I have, I've tried to absorb as much as humanly possible from him, and I'm so grateful for the time that I get to spend with him, because he is a true artist who is operating in a world where sometimes art doesn't get to flourish, and he's trying to make something that really matters. So to be able to just be on the ride and be part of that process, it's pretty unbelievable, pretty tremendous. I'm psyched for the movie."
What do you make of Reeves' update? Do you think he was referring to the Court of Owls? Let us know in the comments section down below.