Jeffrey Wright opened up about filming The Batman, the long-delayed Caped Crusader reboot starring Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne. When Ben Affleck dropped out of the DCEU and left behind his solo project as Bruce Wayne, Warner Bros. decided to reboot the character as a whole, retooling the film to tell a story about Batman's early years of crime fighting in Gotham City. Wright will play Commissioner Jim Gordon in the film, a role previously played by Gary Oldman in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy and J.K. Simmons in the DCEU.
Joining Wright and Pattinson are Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as Riddler, Colin Farrell as Penguin, and Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth. Details about The Batman's plot are largely under wraps, but a trailer that debuted during Warner Bros.' DC Fandome gave a first glimpse at the film. Since then, The Batman has faced numerous production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including one instance where star Pattinson was reported to have tested positive. With the set shutting down several times, filming The Batman took longer than expected and the film is now expected to release in early 2022, nearly a fully year after it was originally slated to debut.
Wright opened up to THR about the arduous production process, calling it "gothic." Wright cited the multiple production shutdowns as the biggest struggle faced by the cast and crew, saying it only brought them closer together and made everyone adamant about finishing the highly anticipated film. The actor goes on to say that he thinks The Batman is a "brilliant movie," one that puts on display the hard work and dedication that the cast and crew mustered up after all of the delays and the longer than normal production process. Check out Wright's full statement below:
It was gothic. It was sleuthful if that’s a word. It was mysterious, and it was tricky. It was tricky because of the conditions that we were working in. It was isolating for those of us who were away from home, out of the country, over in London. I experienced more quarantines than I would wish on anyone, going back and forth over the last six months. So it was a pretty dogged one to try to pull off. We were working in the teeth of the outbreak, and we were trying to protect ourselves, one another and the production. So it took a lot. But what I will say about it too is that it was really gratifying because we all unified around that purpose of doing our jobs, making this film, protecting one another, and getting through it together. And we did. I think we made a brilliant movie, and we did it as a collective that came together as one. I wish we would do a bit more of that in this country right now to get through this thing. But at the very least, I know we did it on that film set, so I know it can be done if the will is there.
The Batman is one of many movies to experience delays because of COVID-19, but it's clear that, as Wright says, filming this movie was particularly rough. Not only did its lead star reportedly test positive, but it was also filming in the UK, which experienced particularly high positive rates during the worst of the pandemic. Luckily, The Batman has wrapped filming for the most part. It was reported that reshoots with stars Pattinson and Farrell would be taking place in July and although there have been no updates about those, it seems that the film may finally be complete.
What kind of impact this will have on the DCEU as a whole, though, remains unclear. The Batman will take place on the DCEU's Earth-2, separate from the main continuity. Whether or not the time-traveling, multiverse adventures of 2022's The Flash somehow bring Pattinson's Batman into the fold remains unclear, but Warner Bros. could also be making an attempt at establishing another branch of their mega-franchise. With several months to go until The Batman premieres and months after that for The Flash, answers won't be immediate, so hopefully they're worth the wait.
Source: THR
