Marvel Studios may currently be considered the king when it comes to live-action comic book movies, but it's DC Comics that has been leading the way in the animated world for years. Now the first trailer for their latest, Batman vs. Robin has arrived and you can watch it below!
Partially based on the Court of Owls storyline that was featured in Batman comics that began with DC's New 52 relaunch, Batman vs. Robin is the continuation of the larger animated continuity/shared universe that began with the release of Justice League: War early last year. As you may be able to tell watching the trailer (which comes to us courtesy of IGN) the titular Robin in this case is Damian Wayne - Batman's son with Talia al Ghul - and he'll be going head-to-head with his father.
As we've seen in other recent shared universe DC animated movies, the new film will feature Jason O'Mara as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Stuart Allan as Robin, Sean Maher as Nightwing, and David McCallum as Alfred, but they will be joined this time around by a pretty interesting group of supporting stars as well. Jeremy Sisto will be playing Talon, an assassin for the Court of Owls; Robin Atkin Downes will voice the grandmaster of the Court of Owls; and DC veteran Peter Onorati will be a character named Draco. My personal two favorites bits of casting, however, are "Weird Al" Yankovic as the Dollmaker - a serial killer who enjoys turning his victims into dolls - and the incredible Kevin Conroy as Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne's murdered father (Conroy, of course, has spent years voicing Batman in various projects including the 90s animated series and the first two Arkham video games).
Batman vs. Robin is the DC animated universe follow up to Justice League: Throne of Atlantis - the last in-continuity movie that Warner Bros. and DC Comics released - but but it isn't the only DC animated film that we will be seeing this year. Stepping outside of the shared universe - similar to what Batman: Assault on Arkham did last year - we will soon see the release of Justice League: Gods and Monsters. It doesn't seem that either new film has an official release date just yet, but both will be debuting within 2015.
While it's obviously not the same kind of deal, it is hard not to notice that DC Comics is making an animated movie called Batman vs . Robin to come out about a year before the release of the similarly titled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. The connections between the two projects probably end right there, but it's still interesting that the company seems to be preparing us for the idea of Batman having adversarial relationships with the people he should be closest to. It's just something to chew on.
