James Gunn Offers Surprising Confession in Update About Batman Movie, The Brave and the Bold

With the premiere of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom just around the corner, the start of the new DCU is getting closer. But that doesn’t mean that it’s almost time for casting news to surface about who will be playing Batman in The Brave and the Bold.

Creature Commandos and Superman: Legacy are the two projects in which James Gunn and Peter Safran have made considerable progress over the last few months, but the process for the rest of the productions that are part of the first phase of the new canon, titled Gods & Monsters, will take a little more time. Essentially, fans should not be expecting any casting news yet, for a good reason revealed by Gunn.

Earlier this month, it was confirmed that Ana Nogueira will write the script for Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, so Kara Zor-El’s solo film is starting to take shape. And while The Brave and the Bold already has a director, it still has a long way to go before announcing the new actor who will play the Caped Crusader.

Answering to a comment on his social media, Gunn confirmed that there will be no news about the casting of the movie to be directed by Andy Muschietti for a long time, because the movie does not yet have a script.

The Brave and the Bold will be mainly inspired by Grant Morrison’s comic book series, and will not only present the new Batman of the DCU, but also his son Damian Wayne as Robin, delving into the relationship between the two and how it impacts their performance as heroes of Gotham City, especially because of Damian’s complicated past.

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The DC universe developed by Zack Snyder began in 2013 with Man of Steel, which was going to be the first chapter of a larger story that would lead to the crossover of the comic book company’s great heroes in Justice League, with some of the character getting solo movies before that, and some others right after it. But the many behind-the-scenes conflicts, the studio’s urgency to compete with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Snyder’s challenges in his personal life ended up derailing the original plans.

In fact, only Henry Cavill’s Superman was given a solo introduction before being thrown into a collaborative ensemble piece. Ben Affleck’s Batman and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman made their full debut in Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, along with fleeting cameo appearances by Ezra Miller’s The Flash, Ray Fisher’s Cyborg and Jason Momoa’s Aquaman. Subsequently, Gadot managed to get two solo movies, as did Momoa – including this December’s sequel – while Miller finally had his solo movie released this past summer.

Although among the first projects announced by Gunn and Safran there will surely be characters that appear in several films or series in order to show that everything is part of the same universe, no major official crossover has been confirmed, so each important character will have the chance to tell their story before that happens. The lack of development for each character was a big problem for the Snyderverse, and it seems this is something that DC Studios is aiming to avoid with the new DCU.