Batman the Animated Series Red Hood Outline

| October 16, 2022 |

Batman: Caped Crusader — *Photo: DC Entertainment*

Batman: The Animated Series remains one of the about iconic reinterpretations of the Dark Knight's globe ever fabricated, so it'south no surprise Warner Bros. wants to revive the tone and mode of that '90s hitting for a new generation. This aesthetic revival will come in the class of Batman: Caped Crusader , which comes from legendary BTAS creator Bruce Timm, The Batman managing director Matt Reeves, and executive producers James Tucker and J.J. Abrams.

While we've even so to run across footage from the new blithe series, and WB has simply released a single piece of fine art that teases a Gold Age-inspired cape and cowl, the Caped Crusader creative team some time at DC Fandome 2022 to outline their vision for the new series. In brusk, the testify sounds as close to Batman: The Animated Series equally we all expected, but it isn't an carbon-copy revival or fifty-fifty a direct sequel. It doesn't sound like information technology actually exists in the same continuity as the before show. Caped Crusader is more than similar a spiritual prequel, taking place in the early on days of the Dark Knight's career before he became the seasoned hero we got to know in BTAS .

"In this new iteration, it's just Batman," Reeves explained during the cursory console. "The Justice League doesn't exist, there aren't any other superheroes. You're watching this lone effigy pond through the cesspool of Gotham. It'due south Batman alone."

Indeed, the bear witness goes back to the roots of Batman: The Animated Series before WB expanded the DC animated universe with shows like Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League . Simply Caped Crusader isn't just set before the formation of the Justice League simply also before Bruce has made allies at the GCPD. This is earlier Robin and Batgirl, and even before the versions of villains popularized in The Blithe Serial . In the globe of Caped Crusader, it sounds like Batman is still being considered a dangerous vigilante who must exist taken off the streets, which could definitely add an interesting layer of complication to the drama of the show.

"We've reconfigured some of the roles some of the characters have. Nosotros're starting before Batman has earned their trust and they've earned Batman's trust," Tucker said. "We don't know that Commissioner Gordon will be Batman's ally. The journeying of the evidence is to meet how they eventually abound together and acquire to trust or non. Nothing is assumed in this series as far equally what nosotros're used to seeing in the world of Batman."

Setting Caped Crusader so early in the Dark Knight's career also means that we'll encounter him fighting crime without all of the loftier-tech toys that have get a staple of the character. While Batarangs and the Bat-grapple are then essential to the grapheme that they'll similar testify up from day one, Tucker teases that you'll see Batman'southward arsenal evolve and grow over time.

"Every bit he develops every bit a character, we'll showtime introducing those gadgets, and the audience can meet how he developed the Batmobile using different prototypes," Tucker explained. "Office of the fun of this serial is that we're finding him discovering these things that [in] most other Batman series they already were there."

Timm said that reviving the way of BTAS in a way that besides went in a different direction "gives the states the opportunity to say, 'Okay, the versions of Joker and Catwoman and Penguin, those versions nosotros did on BTAS were really nifty and iconic but at that place's lots of different ways nosotros can take those characters that we hope will exist just as iconic and only as powerful." He too promised that "the mode we deal with the characters is going to exist quite a bit more than mod in terms of inclusivity and representation," which is very exciting every bit it will undoubtedly provide cool ways to refresh classic characters and tell new types of stories with them.

But while Caped Crusader will explore aspects of Batman's early career that weren't nowadays in BTAS , Timm also stressed that the prove is really striving to recapture the feeling of the '90s show, down to the art mode, which is "definitely heavy on the German expressionism slash film noir kind of styling gear up in a timeless '40s world."

Indeed, office of the reason BTAS has such a stiff presence and identity to this mean solar day is the timeless quality of its setting, which floats somewhere between 40s era Art Deco but with modern flourishes. For Caped Crusader , Timm said that the team is "going to lean into [the 40s] fifty-fifty more in terms of accurate clothes and hairstyles and hats and vehicles and architecture," which makes sense since taking a more retro arroyo volition allow Batman's early career on the show to have its ain unique sense of identify.

"It's more BTAS than BTAS ," Timm said of tackling a Batman drawing in 2022. "It goes back to the original principles of the show that nosotros originally came up with back in the early '90s. At that place was sure limitations on what we could practise in terms of adult content, in terms of violence and developed themes, and my idea is basically to say, 'Okay, it's 1990 again, I become to do what I want to exercise this time.'"

Over the years, we've heard many stories from Timm, also every bit writers and producers Paul Dini and Alan Burnett, about the story ideas that had to exist cutting because they were too dark or developed for a Fox Kids drawing. At that place's "The Gun Story," which would take told the story of the weapon that killed Bruce'due south parents, from its cosmos all the way to the moment it constitute itself in the hands of Joe Chill likewise equally what happened after its involvement in Gotham's most infamous law-breaking.

Another episode would have had Batman turn into a vampire: "He's dark and spooky-looking and he's got that badass costume and the bat imagery. And then I always wanted to go all the way with it and actually make him a vampire," Timm told Den of Geek in 2017. "Nosotros never went as far as a design for him. But there was a grapheme in the comics named Nocturna who is not actually a vampire but she was vampiric. So I did do a design of her, but that was as far as we got. We had the idea, but Fox Kids said, 'No way, don't go in that location.'"

Caped Crusader could be the perfect platform on which to finally tell the BTAS stories we never saw — particularly since the Golden Age comics that clearly inspired this testify featured a vampire! — likewise every bit get deeper into the darker elements of the graphic symbol that were considered likewise grown-up for kids in 1992. Abrams described the first season as "an incredibly circuitous, psychological story about someone who in a way needs to be redeemed."

Information technology'll be very interesting to encounter all of these different pieces come together — the shift in Batman era to a less fully formed Dark Knight, the darker storylines, and the noir sensibility (as Reeves said in the console) could give a new generation of Bat-fans an animated series that could ascertain this character for them in the aforementioned mode information technology did for kids in the '90s. The longtime fan can't look, either.

No release appointment has been set for Batman: Caped Crusader , but we'll bring y'all more than details as we learn them. The show will air on HBO Max and Cartoon Network.