Batman fans are eating… well, bad. Or not much at all. We’re actually starving. Across both video games and movies.
You’ve no doubt seen today’s shocking news that DCU bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran are out at Warner Br… er, Skydance. And thus, the DCU Batman might not even happen. Or rather, there definitely will be a new big-screen Batman eventually, but Gunn’s entire DCU plan may very well be out the window and we might be starting over. Again. Sigh…
Batman has always been my favorite superhero, and so today’s Gunn news has been bumming me out a little more than expected, because I realized that when you account for what’s going on with the Dark Knight in games and movies – or maybe more specifically, what’s not going on, it’s time to accept that we’re in a proper Batman drought.
To zoom out on the movies for a moment, the last time we saw Batman on the big screen was four years ago, via Matt Reeves’s brilliant Robert Pattinson-led The Batman. Prior to that, the Caped Crusader showed up in live-action form in The Snyder Cut of Justice League in 2021 – though obviously that was a movie we’d mostly already seen. And it was a superhero ensemble. With apologies to Batman vs. Superman, where Batfleck had to share the screen with Henry Cavill (though I will always appreciate it solely for the warehouse scene, which is my favorite Batman fight scene ever), you have to go all the way back to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises in 2012 for the last proper live-action Batman film before Matt Reeves’s 2022 gem. Fortunately, DC Animated Studios continues to look out for us Bat-fans, most recently with the stellar Batman: Knightfall Part 1, with an honorable mention to Amazon’s really good Batman: Caped Crusader series.
At least we’ve got The Batman Part 2 to look forward to in 2028… right? Skydance wouldn’t dare pull the plug on it, would they? <insert nervous laughter here>
Batman fans looking for solace in video games arguably have it even worse. Because remember, Gunn was in charge of games, too. Technically, the most recent Batman game was the perfectly good VR entry in the Arkham series, Batman: Arkham Shadow in 2024. But let’s be honest: not a lot of people played that because VR continues to be a chicken-and-egg technology that remains frustratingly far from the mainstream – though I give Meta a lot of credit for trying to get people to invest in VR by producing games like Arkham Shadow.
The wait for a proper new AAA Batman game for PC and consoles might go on for a lot longer.
Speaking of the Batman Arkham games, it has now been a full decade since the last mainline entry, Arkham Knight. Yes, you read that right: 10 years have gone by since Rocksteady completed its incredible trilogy that rewrote the rules – and the expectations – for both Batman games and, dare I say, superhero games in general. It hasn’t been pretty since then, though this next part definitely isn’t Skydance’s fault.
Rocksteady, presumably by order of someone in the Warner Bros. C-suite who saw the live-service craze taking off on the back of Bungie’s Destiny games, got work not on a new Batman game, but instead on a Suicide Squad multiplayer live-service game. It was plain to see ahead of time that it wasn’t going to go well, and surprise surprise, it didn’t. The result has been a wounded studio that, sadly all too predictably, suffered layoffs. And before Suicide Squad even shipped, Rocksteady cofounders Sefton Hill and Jaime Walker, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, left and started a new team, taking some number of Rocksteady developers with them.
The good news is that Rocksteady is reportedly at work on a new single-player Batman game, but it’s likely many years away as the studio picks up the pieces broken by Suicide Squad. The bad news is, even that game’s existence is fair to call into question after Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The upstart Paramount Games was merged with WB Games, of which Rocksteady was a part. And, in another woefully unsurprising move, that group just got hit with layoffs.
So where does that leave Rocksteady? We’re not sure yet. Where does that leave Batman video games? Well, unless WB Games had already been wise enough to go the Lucasfilm route of licensing its properties out to talented external developers prior to Paramount/Skydance entering the picture, the wait for a proper new AAA Batman game for PC and consoles might go on for a lot longer. Sure, Traveller’s Tales cooked with Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, but that game is to the main Arkham games as the animated Batman: Knightfall is to The Batman Part 2, meaning “it’s cool, but not the big thing everyone eagerly wants and anticipates.”
Here’s hoping Skydance has a plan for Batman that it’s willing to stick to – even if it’s Gunn’s plan. It’s already been way too long for one of the most popular superheroes on Earth to have sat on the sidelines on both consoles and the big screen. Let’s hope DC’s progress doesn’t get reset to zero. Again.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go rewatch The Batman for the 50th time, The Dark Knight for the thousandth time, and replay the Arkham trilogy for the umpteenth time.
