Batman Beyond

By: Coming Attractions
Date: Sunday, May 18, 2003

Genre:
Action/Adventure/Science Fiction/Superhero.

Studio:
Warner Bros.

Production Company:
Unknown.

Project Phase:
Script Stage.

Who's In It:
At one time rumors were heard that WB studio execs thought about Keanu Reeves playing the role of the futuristic caped crusader.

Who's Making It:
Boaz Yakin (Director); Paul Dini, Alan Burnett (Screenwriters); Neal Stephenson (Conceptual Ideas,
in negotiations); based on the animated series Batman Beyond, created by Paul Dini, Bruce Timm and Alan Burnett.

Premise:
Decades after the final appearance of Gotham City's Dark Knight, a retired Bruce Wayne lives in the seclusion of his mansion, his days of crimefighting a distant memory. But while Batman's rogues gallery of villains have dissapeared a new generation of criminals have taken over the streets of Gotham. While conducting his own investigation into the mysterious death of his father, 17-year-old Terry McGinnis discovers Bruce Wayne's long-dormant secret identity. After convincing Bruce Wayne that Gotham needs a dark knight to protect its citizens again, Terry inherits the legacy of the dark knight and a new Batman for the 21st century is born.

Release Date:
Unknown.

Comments:
Shortly after the BATMAN BEYOND TV series debuted in 1999, Warner Bros. started thinking about turning this new futuristic take on the Dark Knight into its next BATMAN movie, probably to separate itself from the last outing, the disasterous BATMAN AND ROBIN, as well as rejuvinate the franchise.

Now, with the TV series having run its course, it seems BEYOND has lost its fifteen minutes of fame. Warners now seems more interested in making a new BATMAN movie with the original Dark Knight and spinning off CATWOMAN into her own series of movies. While things can change quickly in Hollywood and there still exists the possibility of one day seeing BATMAN BEYOND on the silver screen, right now it doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon.

Scoop Feedback:

November 5, 1999... Rumors of a BB feature have floated around for a couple of months now, mainly on the Ain't It Cool News website, but today they took on a form of legitimacy when The Hollywood Reporter confirmed through sources WB was thinking of turning the animated BB series into a new Batman movie franchise. Still, there had been no official confirmation from WB.

We asked Paul Dini, one of the creators/producers on the animated Batman Beyond series, what he's heard about the live-action project. "I know that it's one of the possible options that they have discussed at the lot," Dini told us. "To the best of my knowledge no script has been written yet."

However no one has approached any of the key Batman Beyond players about being involved in a live-action film, indicating the idea still remains in the embryonic stages with the high-level Warner Bros. executives (much like the proposed World's Finest Batman/Superman team-up). "I don't know what their plans are for it
beyond just investigating several alternative ways to keep Batman going, as opposed to the way they've been doing the last two or three movies," Dini said of what he's heard of the WB discussions. "It's a real idea that they're considering, but no, no one has asked us to be involved with it." [Reported by Patrick Sauriol.]

November 9, 1999... 'Jett D60', who's webmaster of his own Batman 5 page has heard of an interesting rumor concerning the Batman Beyond project. Here's what Jett says on the matter...

"I have a good source that says they have seen the story treatment for a BATMAN BEYOND movie. It is a cross between THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and BB. Yes Bruce is older and retired, and he will give up the mantle to a new Batman. But we will also see a Bruce-Batman in the movie. And it is in continuity, as it will tie in the past movies to this new one. Also, Terry in this treatment is in his 20's; not a teenager. WB may be leaning this way right now; even replacing the front-running YEAR ONE. Regardless, a new Bat-film is on the fast track and we most likely will see it in summer 2001. Out."

So now we need to confirm if there is a Batman Beyond proposal on someone's desk inside WB and which writer penned the treatment. Any interested WB moles want to take up the challenge? ['Jett D60' rents out the Batcave for bar mitzvahs, birthday parties and groups of 20 or more.]

January 27, 2000... Okay...ready to get caught up to date? No? Tough. Harry over at Ain't It Cool News posted a report around a week ago which strongly implied that not only was the next Batman flick going to be Batman Beyond, but that revered animated series scribes Alan Burnett and Paul Dini were somewhere in the running to pen that selfsame feature. The source for this report turns out to be Brian Saner Lamken, head burrito over at Comicology, the comic book magazine which happens to be bigger than the average person's head. Anyway, Lamken tried to set the record straight with Rob Worley, head burrito at Comics2Film.

Lamken stated that the comments that wound up posted on AICN were never intended to be "on the record." However, what he wanted to go on record with is that he asked Bruce Timm if (A) he and the animated Batman crew would be interested in working on a live action feature and (2) if he thought there was a snowball's chance of that occurring. His response:

"I would love to do that. Are you kidding? My pay scale would get a significant bump, so I'd owe it to my family to say yes...But, no, I
don't think that there's a chance in hell. The only thing that's possible at this point is that Alan [Burnett] and Paul [Dini] have both been approached by the people on the [Warner Bros. Pictures] lot to submit ideas for a [live-action] Batman Beyond movie, but it's all
speculation at this point."

Lamken says watch for the full interview in his ginormous Comicology coming in April. [Thanks to Brian Saner Lamken for setting the record straight and Comics2Film for playing the LP at the right speed.]

February 16, 2000... Leave it to Comics2Film to go and actually bring sanity back to the foreground. We reported about the
acquisition of batman-yearone.com earlier, but Rob Worley and crew went out and snooped about. That's not the only URL WB snagged on that particular day. In fact, Rob posted a full list, which includes not only the usual variations on that domain name, but also many versions of both batmanbeyondthemovie.com and batmanfive.com. Worley states that with this info known, it looks less like a decision has been reached, and more like WB made a preemptive strike against cybersquatters who try to snag important domain names before major companies can. [Thanks to Rob Worley P.I. and Comics2Film, reported by Widgett.]

August 22, 2000... Hold on to your utility belt, the Caped Crusader's coming at you. The gang over at Comics Continuum reports that Paul Dini and Alan Burnett will in fact be writing this live action feature.

Dini recently told the Continuum, "...There will be an official announcement from 'the powers that be' -- i.e., Warner Bros., our respective agents -- very soon, probably the end of next week..."

In addition and still yet to be confirmed by Warner Brothers, Dini also added that director Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans) will be at the helm. This certainly puts Batman back into the spotlight and gets our adrenaline pumping. [Appeared at the ComicsContinuum; reported by Reg.]

August 30, 2000...Cage and comic books, part two. According to the gang at Cinema Confidential, Nicolas Cage is interested in playing a villain in this new live action feature. Cage, who was unable to take the role of the Green Goblin in the
upcoming Spider-Man feature, would be playing corporate magnate Derek Powers who seeks control of Wayne Enterprises. Of course all of this is still unconfirmed at this point but here's a peek at what's happening with the rumored Cage character:

"...his exposure to a biological weapon and subsequent radiation therapy treatments transform him into a glowing skeletal persona known as 'Blight'."

[Thanks to CinemaConfidential; reported by Reg.]

September 15, 2000... Over at Fandom's Batman: Defender of
Gotham site, they're reporting what a little bird inside of WB told them: namely that with the Strike looming just over the horizon, the studio is pushing like a giant mad weasel to get this film made.
However, "the source goes on to say if there is no script and actors chosen by the third week in December and the strike actually happens it'll not be possible to make it in time." For the full article, click here. [Thanks to Dave over at Fandom; originally appeared on Batman: Defender of Gotham.]

September 28, 2000... We received this report from Inkblot regarding a director's screening of Remember the Titans a while back at NYU's Cantor Film Center: "Titans director Boaz Yakin answered a few questions posed by the student audience. When asked about his role in the making of the movie Batman Beyond, he responded with news that in addition to directing he is also co-writing the script, and that the content of the story would be much more 'intense, and less kid oriented' than recent Batman
movies." More power to you, Mr. Yakin. [Thanks to Inkblot.]

Christopher M. had some other comments he wanted to make on Mr. Y's appearance as well: "He did mention that he is extremely excited to head into a project that will challenge him with interesting and grand-scale special effects. Also worthy of note is that Yakin's distaste for all comic-movies (with the exception of Superman 1) will apparently drive him to make a faithful adaptation of the [cartoon]. We can definitely expect a darker, more mature edge on this one." [Thanks to Christopher M. as well.]

October 6, 2000... Well, we've been hearing this quite a bit: Paul Newman as Bruce Wayne? Our UK reader here sums it up pretty well: "Apparently, the Sun is reporting that Paul Newman's talking about being approached to play Bruce Wayne in this production. I think that could actually be pretty good casting but given it was reported in the Sun, I'd take it with about a kilo of salt." Regardless, the consensus among our readers seems to think thatMr. N would be a natural for the Cave. [Jonathan, Zen, Matt Dowson, OzzMosiz, and Anonymous all sent in their two
bits.]

October 15, 2000... Playing catchup with the rumor mill. Cinescape had to go and ruin everybody's fun by going straight to Newman's publicist regarding the recent rumor of him playing the aged Bruce. The publicist said ostensibly: no way in hell. But Cinescape saying that it got started on the Web is interesting, since it actually started in a paper in Britain, The Sun. And what's even more interesting is that the paper quoted Newman as saying "It's hard to believe that I'll be Batman at 75. It's not the usual story, it's going to be futuristic stuff." So was Newman screwing around or did the paper actually invent a quote to put in Newman's mouth? [Originally appeared at
Cinescape; scooped by Leo and Internet 24-7.]

October 20, 2000... At last, it all becomes clear. We asked last time about the Newman rumor and we got back several responses. Apparently the quote attributed to Newman did not originally appear in The Sun, but rather was picked up from a story over at Ain't It Cool by the paper. In the original AIC story, someone overheard Newman making a comment like that in a deli. However, none of the scoops or pointers we got for the Sun story mentioned the primary source. If we had known it was deli hearsay, we probably wouldn't have written it up the way we did. Apologies for those confused, thanks to those who set us straight. [Some of those were Goose, OldSoul3300, Frosteey, and Michael.]

October 29, 2000... Last week, apparently a rumor was born about placing this film in the same continuity as the last four Bat-films. As a scooper told Comics2Film,"[It] will be produced so that it can be interpreted as being in the same continuity as the last four films. But it can also be viewed as a stand alone Bat-film; whichever way the view wants to interpret it." C2F ponders if this is a story bit or simply marketing strategy. We think it's marketing...but without the strategy. [Originally appeared at Batman on Film, Comics2Film.]

October 31, 2000... Quick correction to our scoop up top regarding the Batman Beyond film fitting into the current Bat-film continuity. Jett over at Batman on Film tapped us on the skull and let us know that the primary source of that rumor was one of his contacts. The connections, his guy says, will be "subtle, not blatant." We guess that means no orange neon. [Thanks to Jett over at Batman on Film.]

August 19, 2001... Toon Zone reports that while the Dini/Burnett script for the film has been handed in, don't expect it to be going anywhere anytime soon. As the website states, "Production is currently 'on hold,' and Warners apparently is not pursuing further development at the time." [Originally appeared at Toon Zone; scooped by Tad.]

May 18, 2003... It's now been more than a year since any forward movement has happened with this project, and every indication is that things have grown cold. The last piece of news aboutBATMAN BEYOND heard was published by Comics Continuum in late 2001.

"I don't have any sense of what's going to happen, said Paul Dini (who wrote the BEYOND movie script with Alan Burnett. "We still owe them a rewrite on it, and we're waiting to see.

"All I can sort of do is guess. They're cool on the whole BATMAN BEYOND concept right now. They want to see how a few other takes on Batman that are in development work out. They're still working on a Year One and might have a couple of different takes in the hopper."

"They'll probably look at a bunch of things, including BATMAN BEYOND, and choose one." [First appeared on Comics Continuum.]

In the time following Dini's comments, Warner Bros. has apparently made its decision. Director Christopher Nolan (MEMENTO) is now developing a new BATMAN movie to be written by David Goyer (BLADE) while work continues on molding a CATWOMAN feature film for Oscar-winner Halle Berry to star in. French special effects supervisor Pitof will make his directing debut on that picture.

For all intents and purposes, BATMAN BEYOND is dead in the water.