It’s been four weeks since Matt Reeves’ The Batman closed its production in an effort to adhere to safety guidelines surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. Although the setback was initially going to last two weeks, it has been announced that the Warner Bros project will not roll its cameras again until it is deemed safe enough to do so.
As the The Batman co-writer and director Matt Reeves waits for the thumbs up to resume production in London, he has provided an update of how he’s still being productive on the DCEU project without being on set. Here’s what he said:
We’re not officially editing right now. We’ve actually shot a quarter of the movie and I have been pouring through dailies, looking at takes, and what’s to come.
The Batman started filming in January ahead of its planned summer 2021 release date before officially packing things up on March 14. A month’s delay is already a sizable amount of time for the film starring Robert Pattinson to lose, but Matt Reeves has been given more time to look back at what has been shot and plan what’s next.
In the interview with Deadline, he even offered an upside to the paused production is more time for him to really understand the tone he has created with what he has filmed so far and connect it further to the storyline. In his words:
It feels like there might be an opportunity to explore some of that unexpected tone that we found. With these movies, you never have enough prep time, because they’re so complex and so enormous in so many ways. It also gives me a moment to think about the larger sequences that have yet to come up and how I want to realize those.
Sure, it’s been a bummer to hear about movies like The Batman delay their production schedules and release dates in some cases. But in Matt Reeves’ case, he has more time to really understand what movie he is making, and The Batman could end up being better for it. Warner Bros. already has a lot of pressure on it considering Pattinson will be the seventh Dark Knight. This stall in production could actually give it a bit of an upper hand.
Matt Reeves took two years to write The Batman, which he describes as a “very specific mystery noir” with a “humanist bent.” The War for the Planet of the Apes filmmaker pitched the movie to the studio with his vision in mind, which he has also teased is not an origin story but will feature a Batman who has yet to be “fully-formed."
The set suffered a tragedy last week when the film’s dialect coach and Star Wars actor Andrew Jack died at 76 of COVID-19 in Surrey, England. The production was gearing up to move from London to Liverpool before plans were changed.
The Batman’s release date is June 25, 2021. Check back here on CinemaBlend for more updates on this film and other DCEU projects.
