With the coronavirus outbreak having closed down basically any entertainment or work endeavor that would see more than about 50 people gather together, nearly all film productions have ceased for the foreseeable future. However, one high profile project that had not been specifically called out as closed was Matt Reeves' upcoming Batman film. Unfortunately, if you were holding out hope that the DC hero was still working away in a safe corner of the world, there's some bad news, as The Batman has also been shuttered for the foreseeable future, rather than simply the two week delay that was previously announced.
A fan recently took to Twitter to find out the status of The Batman from Matt Reeves himself, and the director confirmed that the set is closed until further notice. He doesn't say anything about the production planning to return in two weeks, so we shouldn't expect that to happen.
It's not surprising to hear that The Batman production is closed longer than anticipated. It's something we likely all expected. Of course, right now, we could probably all use some of those shots from the set of the batsuit or the Batmobile that got everybody excited at a point that feels like a million years ago now. Getting a photo like that would be great for the morale right now.
The Batman isn't scheduled for release until June of 2021, so there's plenty of time for the movie to get back on track and probably still complete filming and post production in time to hit that date. Of course, that assumes that production will be resuming at a point sometime vaguely soon, and we simply don't know that will be the case. When things started to close down around the middle of March, it looked like the plan was to only be shutdown for a couple of weeks, now, however, it's looking like things may be closed much longer than that.
At this point, Hollywood is going to have a lot of work to clean up once things do return to whatever counts as normal going forward. All the films that have seen delayed releases will need to find new homes on the calendar, which will likely mean a lot of movies currently on the calendar will be pushed further back to make space. Some movies that are currently in production will possibly miss their release dates due to the delay Meaning they'll need new release dates as well. Even movies that might hit their dates could get pushed back due to all the other films jockeying for position.
Certainly, nobody wants The Batman to return to production any sooner than is safe. Perhaps the dark knight can be our beacon. When he's back, we know it will be ok to resume normal life. Perhaps he could give us some sort of signal.
