[UPDATED] Director Matt Reeves Says ‘The Batman’ Is A ‘Standalone’, Separate From The DCEU

UPDATE: Director Matt Reeves clarified his statement regarding “The Batman” movie. Apparently, the film will still be a part of the DCEU. He posted the following statement on Twitter: “Just to be clear: of course, Batman will be part of the D.C. Universe. Batman will be Batman. In my comments from a while back about not being part of the DCEU, I was talking about The Batman being a story specifically about Batman, not about the others in the Universe. That it wouldn’t be filled with cameos servicing other stories—that it would be a BATMAN story.”

ORIGINAL STORY: Recent comments about the upcoming “The Batman” movie starring Ben Affleck are starting to sound like it’s slowly shying away from the DC Extended Universe timeline. After a standalone “The Joker” movie was announced, director Matt Reeves is following suit by announcing that his solo Batman movie is also starting with a clean slate.

This game-changing news comes from an interview that Reeves did with L.A. radio station KCRW’s show, “The Business,” where host Kim Masters asked the director a few questions about his latest film, “War for the Planet of the Apes.” As both were talking about the movies, they were then led to the subject of “The Batman.” According to Reeves, the big fishes at Warner Bros. that he had been having discussions about the solo Batman film said that this version of The Dark Knight won’t be in any way connected to the DCEU (or any other cinematic universe, for that matter).

Matt Reeves on The Batman: ‘It’s Standalone’

Ben Affleck in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures.

“What they said was, ‘Look, it’s a standalone, it’s not part of the extended universe,’” said Reeves, further emphasizing that the reason why the executives of the studio got him in the first place was that they liked his ‘personal vision’ for “The Batman.” Reeves even hinted that like Nolan, his Batman film might even lead to a trilogy.

“I said, listen if you want someone who’s coming in from this perspective—because here’s the thing: I’m also totally fine not doing Batman. It’s not like I want to do any version of Batman; I want to do my version of Batman and if that’s exciting to them, which so far everything we’ve talked about is, then that’s incredibly exciting because that means, wow, we’re going to do something we’re all excited about. And if they’re not, it’s completely their prerogative. This is their franchise. They own the characters, they’re going to spend a tremendous amount of money so I’m not asking anybody to do what they don’t want to do. All I’m saying is if we want to do the same thing, great, and if we don’t, that’s also OK.”

Picking up from where “The Joker” movie announcement was made, it looks like Warner Bros. is devising a new plan to further make use of their DC characters without the problem of continuity and shared stories between each film. This also intensifies the notion that Ben Affleck might not be the Batman for very long, as his involvement has slowly been dialed back since Reeves took the helm. But in any case, Affleck has insisted during the San Diego Comic-Con that he is indeed “The Batman” for as long as Warner Bros. would have him play the character.