DC Announces New Batman and Robin Movie

The last time DC and Warner Bros. attempted to make a full-fledged Batman and Robin movie, it looked like this.

So perhaps that is a big reason why every single iteration since then has focused solely on a solitary Dark Knight. In the Zack Snyder movies, Robin is a dead kid’s costume hanging in a case in the Batcave. The closest Christopher Nolan ever got to adding Robin to his Batman trilogy was including a police officer who sort of helps Batman in The Dark Knight Rises and in the very last scene mumbles under his breath “Oh hey, my actual first name is Robin, not sure why that matters to anyone for any reason, but FYI.” And Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader in The Batman is so inexperienced he’s not qualified in any way to take a young kid under his wing.

But the new DC Universe of movies and shows that was just announced will not only include a new Batman — it’s getting a Robin as well. The film featuring the new versions of the characters will be titled The Brave and the Bold, based on the long-running DC comic series. (Which, truth be told, starred Batman and assorted other DC heroes, not Batman and Robin, but whatever.) While details about the movie are fairly limited at the moment, we do know this much: The movie will be an “unusual father-son story inspired by Grant Morrison’s comic series.”

That means that the Robin of The Brave and the Bold will be Damian Wayne, who was first introduced by writer Grant Morrison during his extremely popular run on various Batman comics in the mid-2000s. During this period, Morrison revealed that Bruce Wayne had unknowingly fathered a child (that would be Damian) with Talia al Ghul, the daughter of his arch-nemesis, Ra’s al Ghul. Although father and son are initially at odds, Damian does eventually become the latest person to carry the Robin identity. (Although he really became Robin during a period where Bruce Wayne was “dead” and Dick Grayson — the original Robin, who’s usually known as Nightwing these days —was Batman. Comics are… weird.)

Presumably, the movie version will ignore all that stuff and just focus on the relationship between Bruce and Damian. You have to assume the movie will be a sort of origin story for the Damian character; although he’s popular with DC readers, he’s not a well-known character beyond that.

As for Robert Pattinson’s Batman, DC also announced today that he is getting his own sequel: The Batman – Part II. It is scheduled to open in theaters in October of 2025. That might sound like a long way off, but it’s just over two years away.