‘The Batman’ script nears completion, Matt Reeves quiet on cast, Ben Affleck and filming in 2019

The news surrounding The Batman, a solo film within the DCCU, has been muddled at best and negative most of the time.

Now Slash Film reports an update from director Matt Reeves.

“We are working on getting our draft [in] the next couple weeks,” Reeves said. “Right now, my head is totally into the script. Right now, I’m going to be leaving here to go back to work on the script.”

Reeves seemed hopeful that the draft could be on the fast track to film early next year.

“What we’ve talked about is hopefully in the spring or early summer, something like that,” Reeves said.

Ben Affleck’s exit from the project has been reported, then refuted, so here’s the latest from Reeves: “There are ways in which all of this connects to DC, to the DC universe as well…We’re one piece of many pieces so I don’t want to comment on that except to say that I’m focused very specifically on this aspect of the DC world.”

Reeves added that the shift in direction for DC films did not alter his plans for The Batman.

“From the beginning, what I had always spoken about with Warner Brothers and what I was excited about was being in the Batuniverse and really doing something within that sphere,” Reeves said. “That was always what it was going to be so in that way it hasn’t changed a lot since I first met with them. It’s very much the same thrust if that makes sense. A lot of things have happened since then but the movie, and why I’m excited about it, is it continues to be the same inspirations and excitement of what we talked about in the beginning.”

Reports linked The Batman as an adaptation of the comic book arc Year One, which was is a highly acclaimed origin story from Frank Miller. Reeves confirmed The Batman is not a retelling of Year One.

“We’re not doing any particular [comic],” Reeves said. “Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One. It’s just exciting to be focused very specifically on a tale that is defining for him and very personal to him. Obviously we’re not doing an origin tale or anything like that. We’re doing a story that is definitively Batman though and trying to tell a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman.”

While Reeves may be a Batman comic book aficionado, he will blend all his favorite Bat tales into something new, reflecting the decades-long history of Batman on screen.

“I’ve talked about making it a very point of view noir-driven definitive Batman story in which he is investigating a particular case and that takes us out into the world of Gotham,” Reeves said. “I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favorite comics. Those all inform by osmosis. There’s no continuation of the Nolan films. It’s very much trying to find a way to do this as something that for me is going to be definitively Batman and new and cool.”