The Long Halloween, the 1996 comic book maxi-series by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, follows a younger Dark Knight investigating a year-long murder mystery, with a serial killer striking on different holidays each month. Producing the two-part animated adaptation is industry veteran Butch Lukic, who has worked in animation for decades as an animator, director and producer.

In an interview with CBR, Lukic shared how this adaptation of the classic comic book story came to be. He discussed how Sale's work inspired the production as it developed its art style and praised the voice cast who brought the iconic characters to life.

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CBR: How did the idea to adapt Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's The Long Halloween first come about?

Butch Lukic: Originally, we had a roundtable meeting with DC and Warner Animation. There was a few of us there: Sam Register, James Tucker, me, Jim Krieg. We were all sitting around discussing what could we adapt from the list that we were given by [the home video team] that they considered the top of the list that we could put out on DVD or Blu-ray. We went down the list and #1 on the list was always The Long Halloween, but Bruce [Timm] had his reasons [for not doing it immediately], James Tucker had his own storyline going and feel there's things from The Long Halloween that he's already picked from. I was just there as a guest and, once nobody wanted to do it, I went over to Sam and said, "Fuck it, I'll do it!" [laughs]

With this, you've got Chris Palmer directing after previously working with him on Superman: Man of Tomorrow. What made him the right man for the job with this project?

Here's the thing with Chris -- I originally got him for The Long Halloween. Me and him were actually going to be doing a DC Access Batman series which never took off and, when I got him back with Warner Bros., the first thing I told him was that we were going to have to do The Long Halloween. This is all pre-Man of Tomorrow; The Long Halloween was actually the first thing we worked on. After that, we worked on Man of Tomorrow but we ended up getting delayed on Batman: The Long Halloween's release date, so we moved to Man of Tomorrow and released that one first.

Just like with The Dark Knight Returns, you're splitting this into two parts. I was talking to screenwriter Tim Sheridan and he said there was talk about releasing this as a single feature. What led to the split?

Yeah, that was Tim when we were working out how much story there is. I just wanted to do one movie and then move on to something else so I didn't think of two movies for this. I figured I could get most of the content in one movie though it might've been quick and fast-paced. But [Tim] said no, we've got to split it up into two, and it was pretty much Tim letting me know there was no way we could cut out certain parts and keep them in the story. He wanted to stick as true as we could to do the book but there's 13 issues.

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Tim Sale has a very distinct art style on those thirteen issues. How did you want to transpose that to the look of these films?

That was something pre-designed. I was thinking about and I had all his drawings blown up and on my wall as I thinking about how I was going to adapt this to animation. I laid it out and it was close to what it was going to look like in the final film but I was told that I needed to continue on past Batman: The Long Halloween, so I had another style that was going to work on other projects like Man of Tomorrow and Justice Society: World War II. I really couldn't go with what I originally intended to adapt Tim Sale's style because it wouldn't work for those other movies, unfortunately. That was my intent if I was just going to do one movie.

The Long Halloween has virtually every major villain from Batman's early years. What are some that you were really looking forward to design and include for these movies?

We wanted to do a really nice take on the Joker, of course, but getting to do Two-Face after a long time; for me, 20 years at least. Definitely getting involved with the Scarecrow and Calendar Man, for sure.

With the voice cast, how was it assembling it with guys like David Dastmalchian, Josh Duhamel and Jensen Ackles?

David is a big fan of the material, but there's also a lot of voices that he can do. He's probably a key guy that can take on anything. He's the nicest guy in the world that you could ever meet but then he can go crazy. Jensen was a choice through [voice director] Wes Gleason and, though I had watched some episodes of Supernatural before, I wasn't a regular. [Wes] gave me some of his scenes from those episodes and he was a no-brainer. Jensen is perfect as Batman, especially Batman in Year 2 and moving forward.

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The Long Halloween was always a love letter to crime cinema and film noir, straight up quoting The Godfather in the comic. How was it developing that noir look for Gotham in the film?

As far as Tim Sale had it in the books, that art style was an old world, Gothic cityscape. I follow a lot of old '40s crime films and noir films and know the cinematography of them. I know what he was going for in certain shots, so it was pretty much going through that old material that had in Batman: The Animated Series and adapted it to this style and look. It's definitely true to Batman and old crime films instead of over-the-top superhero films. Like you said, The Godfather was definitely a big influence, but we dropped the dialogue that was actually lifted from The Godfather and replaced it with our own version to give it a feel of that.

The Long Halloween had a comic book sequel with Dark Victory. Are there any plans to continue the story with an adaptation of Dark Victory down the line?

Initially, when I was developing this, I had Dark Victory in mind for a sequel but because things changed, as far as when we were going to release The Long Halloween and The Batman stepping in the way of that, we didn't know what they were going to do. The version of Dark Victory that I was going to do was kind of put by the wayside. If this movie does well, I'd love to revisit it and do that Dark Victory story.

Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One stars Jensen Ackles as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Naya Rivera as Catwoman/Selina Kyle, Josh Duhamel as Harvey Dent, Billy Burke as James Gordon, Titus Welliver as Carmine Falcone, David Dastmalchian as Calendar Man, Troy Baker as Joker, Amy Landecker as Barbara Gordon, Julie Nathanson as Gilda Dent, Jack Quaid as Alberto, Fred Tatasciore as Solomon Grundy and Alastair Duncan as Alfred, along with Frances Callier, Greg Chun, Gary Leroi Gray and Jim Pirri. The film is scheduled for release on June 22. Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two arrives digitally on July 27 and on Blu-ray on Aug. 10.

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