Corona | Coming Attractions

With Christopher Nolan's trilogy of Batman movies now complete, what's Warner Bros. doing about passing on the Gotham City torch to the next filmmaker? Officially no one is speaking for the movie studio. While The Dark Knight Rises earned a commanding $448 million dollars domestically at the box office, WB is opting to not discuss what plans (if any) it has for the next Batman movie.

Leave it to the man running the web's top Batman news and rumors website to fill our need for knowledge. Batman on Film has been breaking insider news about this franchise since 1998, and I know the owner of the site fairly well. Jett's connections give him an edge that very few of us have when it comes to insider knowledge about the Bat-franchise.

Today BoF published a morsel of info tld to them by a Batman movie insider. According to this source, WB isn't thinking of releasing a new Batman pictrue until 2017 at the earliest -- two years after the planned release of their live-action Justice League movie and five years after The Dark Knight Rises came out.

While the notion of a five-year drought between successful Batman movies might not sound very appealing to fans, the BoF scoop makes a certain kind of business sense. Consider this: we don't know how the character of Batman will be shown in the Justice League movie. Will Warner Bros. follow closely with the Nolanverse take on the hero, or will the makers of Justice League favor a Batman that echoes other character aspects? Whatever version of Batman the Justice League movie makers chose to use, WB is playing it safe: if Justice League isn't well-received by audiences, they can always reboot with a different approach to Batman in their '17 stand-alone movie plans.

Whomever dons the dark knight's costume for Justice League will undoubtedly be signed to play Batman in a stand-alone movie -- if Warner Bros. decides that the actor and his interpretation of Batman has been well received. Remember, this same studio decided to do away with Brandon Routh after Superman Returns failed to launch the Man of Steel movie franchise in the naughties decade. The same thing could play out for the future of the Batman movie franchise, if the stars don't align favorably for Justice League.