Popverse's top stories

• Netflix's Stranger Things: Tales from '85 announcement sure seems to be teasing the return of a dead (?) season 2 character
• Here's how to watch all the New York Comic Con 2025 panels
• Watch Capcom tell NYCC 2025 how they've kept up the fight for over 45 years

Is cinema big enough for two Batmen? DC Studios co-president James Gunn thinks so.

The next cinematic Batman is set to make his debut in The Brave and the Bold, an upcoming film set in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Universe. The film, which will be directed by Andy Muschietti, is currently in the development phase, and no actor has been announced as the Dark Knight yet. However, Matt Reeves’ Batman saga is still in progress, with The Batman Part II set to start shooting in 2026. This has caused some people to wonder if general audiences will be confused when they see Robert Pattinson as Batman in one film, and a new actor in another continuity a year or two later. However, James Gunn thinks these concerns are overblown.

“I think that people are really starting to learn about stuff like that,” Gunn says during an interview with Brandon Davis. 

Davis compared it to when people would ask why the X-Men couldn’t crossover with the Avengers before Disney bought Fox.

“Was it causing anybody grief in any way?,” Gunn replies.

Gunn says people don’t give the general audience enough credit, and that the comic fans have bigger issues with it.

“One of the weirdest things for me is that big fans are often like, ‘Well, listen, I understand this, but normies will never understand this. Casuals will never understand this.’ But the truth is, guys, you’re the ones that don’t understand.”

“The casuals always understand. You can say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s changed Peacemaker. There was some Justice League in that, now it’s the Justice Gang.’ Regular people who just like TV shows are like, ‘Oh, okay, that’s weird.’ And then they’re done. But the people who really focus on this stuff are in our bubble. And the people in our bubble think that everyone outside of that bubble is too stupid to understand nuance. And it is just totally not the case.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. At the very least, we’ll get double the amount of Batman on film, which isn’t a bad thing.

He is vengeance, he is the night, he is... one of Popverse's favorite subjects. Learn how to do a Dark Knight movie marathon right with our Batman movie guide, and for the true World's Greatest Detectives out there, dive deep into the heart of Gotham City by getting to know Batman with Popverse. Here are some of our latest Batman stories:

• Batman and his prank war side from Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen days will pop out some in Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez's upcoming DC relaunch
• How The Wire, prank wars, and superhero-forward comics inspired DC's upcoming Batman relaunch according to writer Matt Fraction
• DC's Batman teams up with Inception storyboard artist Gabriel Hardman for R-rated "open class warfare" story pitting the Dark Knight vs. Green Arrow and the Question