Another Major Delay Spells Doom For James Gunn’s DCU

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 16 seconds ago

When James Gunn’s DCU began with a Superman movie, many superhero fans had the same question: when are we going to see a team-up with Batman? Unfortunately, an onscreen collaboration between the World’s Finest seems increasingly farther away. Nobody has been officially cast as the DCU’s Batman, and his first movie doesn’t have a premiere date yet. Weirdly enough, that hasn’t kept Warner Bros. from greenlighting numerous projects focused on the Caped Crusader’s foes, including Clayface (releasing October 23) and a Deathstroke/Bane team-up film. Now, it seems like our odds of seeing Batman in the DCU have gotten worse with the surprise delay of a completely separate project.

Separate from James Gunn’s cinematic universe, Matt Reeves has continued working on the sequel to his 2022 hit film The Batman. The sequel was previously scheduled to be released on October 1, 2027, and fans were counting down the days until they’d see Robert Pattinson kicking butt and taking names once more. Unfortunately, the countdown just got longer: The Batman II has been officially delayed to February 18, 2028. This is actually the second delay for the movie, and one that may effectively endanger the DCU by forcing two different Dark Knights to compete against each other.

Dancing With The Delay In The Pale Moonlight

Fans of Matt Reeves’ The Batman are getting all too used to the sequel getting pushed back. Originally, the movie had a release date of October 2, 2026, but the studio delayed it until October 1, 2027, to give Reeves more time for postproduction. Now, it has been delayed until February 18, 2028, which gives the director even more time to polish the sequel. Nonetheless, the repeated delays have concerned some fans who worry that the film is a Supergirl-style stinker Reeves is trying to fix in post. Others worry that even if the film is great, making us wait over half a decade between sequels will kill any momentum the movie could have had.

DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn disagrees, of course. On Threads, he mentioned how several sequels achieved critical and commercial success despite a long wait between films. “7 years between Alien and Aliens. 14 years between Incredibles. 7 years between the first two Terminators. 13 years between Avatars. 36 years between Top Guns. And, of course, six years between Guardians Vol 2 and Vol 3.” While he has a point, it’s worth noting that several of his examples (including Aliens, Terminator 2, and The Incredibles 2) succeeded back before audiences were collectively hooked on the never-ending stream of new content from platforms like TikTok.

Will Audiences Respond To The Next Bat-Signal?

In other words, a huge wait between The Batman and The Batman II might be a turn-off for younger audiences more attuned to movies like Obsession and Backrooms, both of which were created by filmmakers who first achieved success on YouTube. The real elephant in the room, though, is that delaying Matt Reeves’ latest film may end up hurting the eventual Batman DCU film. Rumors have been swirling that Warner Bros. is trying to find the right actor for the role, and the failure of Supergirl may encourage the studio to focus on a new Dark Knight movie sooner rather than focusing on another relatively minor character.

If that happens, the DCU Dark Knight movie (Batman: The Brave and the Bold) could come out very soon after The Batman II; possibly less than a year later. Should this occur, one or both of the films are likely to suffer at the box office. For example, if mainstream audiences know that The Brave and the Bold is coming, they may avoid The Batman II, like audiences avoided Blue Beetle and The Flash when they knew the DCEU was coming to an end. Conversely, if Reeves’ sequel is really great, The Brave and the Bold may suffer from comparison, with fans wondering why the latest DCU film can’t be as good as what came before.

Batman is my absolutely favorite superhero, so I’d love to be wrong about this. In my perfect world, The Batman II will be even better than the original, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold will be the best film in the DCU. But the failure of Supergirl (which had very little to compete with) has underscored how fickle audiences can be when it comes to superhero cinema. Delaying The Batman II for over half a decade may very well sink that movie’s chances at the box office even as it sabotages the next film featuring the Caped Crusader. Forget the Joker: as it turns out, Batman’s greatest enemy may be studio interference!