Writer/director Matt Reeves explained his decision to keep The Batman separate from the DC Extended Universe.
"I felt to do a standalone Batman film for the first time in 10 years, I needed to make sure that Batman was at the center and that we weren't trying to keep all these other planes up in the air," Reeves told the Toronto Sun. "Doing a Batman film is daunting; you are taking on some great history and there are some really great Batman films. So I felt like that would have been too much. Thankfully, [Warner Bros.] said I could do that."
Reeves' desire for The Batman to be separate from previous films coincided with current DCEU Batman, Ben Affleck, reconsidering his future in the franchise. "But as we continued -- I was finishing off [War For the Planet of the] Apes -- Ben was re-evaluating what he wanted to do in his life," Reeves explained. "When he decided he didn't want to be Batman anymore, I said, 'I really want to hold on to this idea that this isn't going to be a part of the DCEU and now we can create a new Batman.' That's kind of how it evolved to this place."
The last standalone Batman movie was 2012's The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy. The Caped Crusader returned to the big screen with Affleck under the cowl in 2016's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Affleck would reprise the role in both the 2017 theatrical release of Justice League and Zack Snyder's Justice League in 2021. He is also due to appear in the upcoming The Flash movie, due for release on Nov. 4.
The Batman was due to be Affleck's first solo outing as The Dark Knight, but a series of professional and personal pressures led the actor to reconsider whether he wanted to do the movie at all. "I looked at it and thought, 'I'm not going to be happy doing this. The person who does this should love it,'" Affleck said of the project.
With Affleck out of the picture, Reeves had to find a new actor. Inspired by DC Comics' seminal Batman story "Year One" by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, The Batman will follow a much younger Bruce Wayne who is only in his second year of vigilantism. In a previous interview, Reeves explained how this led him to choose Robert Pattinson as his leading man.
"Of course, the idea [to fit with the Year One story] was to make him a younger actor," Reeves said. "And in the process of writing the movie, I watched [the 2017 film] Good Time, and I thought, 'Okay, he's got an inner kind of rage that connects with this character and a dangerousness, and I can feel this desperation.' And I became dead-set on it being Rob."
The Batman is in theaters from March 4.
Source: Toronto Sun