Premiering digitally on July 27, Batman: The Long Halloween, Part 2 will conclude the animated adaptation of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's classic comic. The second film follows the Dark Knight scouring Gotham City for a serial killer who strikes on holidays. However, he must first contend with his colorful rogues gallery. Simultaneously, Harvey Dent quickly descends into his own supervillain persona as Two-Face amidst Gotham's rising villains. Crafting both installments of the animated adaptation is screenwriter Tim Sheridan.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Sheridan shared the creative challenges that came with adapting the thirteen-issue comic story into two animated movies, praised stars Jensen Ackles and Josh Duhamel for their performances, and teased one story that didn't make the final cut.
When this was first announced, I assumed the biggest creative challenge would be taking the month-to-month format and translating it to film while keeping the audience invested and the story flowing. How was that?
Tim Sheridan: Yeah, it was the biggest challenge. It's the reason why I pitched doing two movies when originally The Long Halloween adaptation was supposed to be one 72-minute movie. I looked at it and said, "Guys, I can't make this be The Long Halloween and do it all." When you look at the major plot points that need to happen in order for it to be The Long Halloween, they would've had to happen in strange places within the three-act structure of the movie. It would've meant we were jumping ahead in time every two minutes in order to get a sense of what's happening on the calendar, it's the spine of the story. It needed a little bit more room for it to breathe.
I know there's a lot of talk about how we only went through a couple of months in Part 1 so there's a lot more time to be covered in Part 2. The good news is that Part 2 is the dirtied up, marred side of the coin, as opposed to the pristine side that was Part 1, so we move a lot faster. You'll see in the very beginning that we take you through a couple of months pretty quickly. Originally, it was written to be a credit/montage sequence where we show you the events of a couple of months that way. We ended up doing it a little bit differently in the final film but it was a big challenge in order to make sure it retained its structure and it still feels like you're getting the story for The Long Halloween.
I think we did a pretty good job of balancing the needs of the narrative structure in telling a movie story versus telling a calendar-based story that worked really well in a monthly comic book but presented a challenge on-screen.
The other challenge I thought going into this was adapting the April Fools' Day issue because, as much as I love the comic, it's a glorified recap issue. Was there ever a consideration to bring in the Riddler?
In the very first draft, I tried to make it work. I think we all looked at it and, like you said, it really serves as a recap in the course of the comics. And in the course of the film, it just stopped it dead. We didn't really need that recap at that moment. In order to involve the Riddler in a meaningful way, we would've had to have gone completely whole-hog completely rewriting that section, and creating a new story for the Riddler. I don't know if it was me or [producer Butch Lukic] that said why don't we do this in a way that that story still gets to happen -- which is how we approach every decision that we make in terms of what we kept in and what we changed -- what if that story still happens but we just don't get to watch it in the movie but we don't do anything so it couldn't happen.
The effect on your imagination, if you've read the book, you know where that goes at this point in the movie. That led to the decision to produce a short for April Fools' and for that short to accompany the movie for us to see that Riddler story play out in a different way as a piece that we took out of the story that was produced so you could enjoy it. I wrote a script for it and it ultimately wasn't produced so it's sitting out there. Maybe people will want that short to be produced so much that there'll be a rallying cry and Warner Bros. will put that thing on-screen.
You've got a murderers' row for your voice cast on this. Which performance surprised you the most and maybe added something you hadn't seen initially.
Well, the one that didn't surprise me at all because I knew how great he was going to be was Jensen Ackles. I was so excited for him to come do this and he is so terrific in the movie so there was no surprise, I just knew he could pull that off and he does it with flying colors. The one that surprised me was Josh Duhamel: Josh has a very complicated role and he brought a really creative and interesting balance to it. He's pulling double-duty here, appropriately, and he brought a really new and interesting tone -- not just the sound but the characterization -- to the two sides of Harvey Dent. It really just blew me away, I think he's terrific and it just set a standard for how we look at Harvey Dent going forward.
I do love that you seed Harvey being at war with himself earlier than the comic. It's more subtle in Part 1 but you really ramp it up in Part 2. How was it developing that dynamic?
It was something I felt we needed to do a lot earlier. There's a whole scene in Part 1 where Harvey has escaped from the hospital and is outside of Falcone's building and the scene which we believe to be between Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent but that scene was written to be, unbeknownst to Gordon, a scene between him and Two-Face. It was meant to be the emergence of Two-Face, the first time he took himself out for a walk. Josh brought really great darkness and subtlety to that; he's subtle enough that, if you know where Harvey's head is, you kind of got that in the scene. If don't, it'll be a fun surprise when you go back and watch Part 1 again after Part 2.
I think people will see what Josh is doing there to lay the groundwork for where that character is headed. We do really build it up here in Part 2 as part of his big coming-out story, I think that's the fun of Harvey. Harvey isn't just someone with facial scars -- yet he has facial scars -- Harvey's scars run much deeper than that and we have to experience that and understand that there is much more going on under the surface for him.
Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two arrives digitally on July 27 and on Blu-ray Aug. 10.