Anyone that was under the impression that one Batman simply wasn’t enough can rest easy, because based on recent developments, it looks like we could soon have four Caped Crusaders dishing out vigilante justice spread across Warner Bros. and DC’s upcoming movies.
Not only do we have Robert Pattinson playing the title character in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, but Ben Affleck’s veteran Dark Knight will be returning to our screens next year when the Snyder Cut of Justice League finally arrives in 2021, and there’s even been rumors that Affleck could be talked into making a standalone movie of his own.
If that wasn’t enough, the speculation surrounding the possibility of Jeffrey Dean Morgan reprising his cameo role as Thomas Wayne to play the Flashpoint version of Batman has been picking up some serious steam recently, and that was before the internet went into meltdown at the shocking news that Michael Keaton is in talks to return as Bruce Wayne in The Flash, before moving on to become something approaching the DCEU’s Nick Fury.
That’s certainly a lot of bat for your buck, leaving many to wonder what’s canon and what’s not these days as the DCEU goes all-in on the multiverse. But noted insider Daniel Richtman has since claimed that Pattinson and director Matt Reeves’ proposed trilogy won’t share the same timeline as Aquaman, Wonder Woman and the rest, and The Batman will act as a standalone entity much like Joker.
We’d previously heard that Reeves was fighting to keep his reboot out of the shared continuity, although the multiverse theory means that it can’t entirely be ruled out. So, with Affleck still retired, Morgan not yet confirmed for The Flash and Pattinson off doing his own thing, in the year 2020 the 68 year-old Michael Keaton appears to be the DCEU’s one true Batman. What a time to be alive.