There’s already plenty of Batman coming in James Gunn’s new DC universe, between Brave and the Bold and the sequel to The Batman. But hey, it’s Batman, and when has DC been known to not simply keep doing even more Batman? Which is why this incredible concept art for a Beyond movie, by the way of Spider-Verse, has us hoping Warner Bros will get something in the works.
A visual development artist on both Into and Across the Spider-Verse, Yuhki Demers, dropped this trio of Batman Beyond concept pieces on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, this morning. Demers revealed they were part of a larger pitch they made with My Dad the Bounty Hunter’s Patrick Harpin at Warner Bros for a movie inspired by the legendary futuristic continuation of Batman: The Animated Series.
“Before we pitched, they warned us ‘there is absolutely no way we can do a Beyond movie’, but they loved our enthusiasm,” Demers wrote. “We pitched the outline for the entire film, and what started as a ‘never’ turned into a ‘maybe.’”
According to Demers, pitching their Beyond idea is still an ongoing process—although just how far those pitches are along if they’re sharing art publicly remains to be seen. But still, just look at it. The Spider-Verse inspiration is strong, but it’s also a great aesthetic for Beyond to ape, and a really clever modernization of the hazy, cyberpunkian aesthetic of the original cartoon. DC animation has a long and storied history on TV, but on the big screen it’s not had a spotlight for years and years (although that could change with Gunn’s plans for Creature Commandos). A Batman Beyond movie—something that has purportedly tried to get off the ground at WB multiple times—would be a great way to bring that legacy to the big screen in a huge way. Especially one that looks as gorgeous as this art.
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