The Batman is just one of many Hollywood productions affected by COVID-19. While we still don’t know how long the film will remain in shutdown, director Matt Reeves is out doing press for his new Amazon series Tales From The Loop. When speaking with the New York Times, Reeves touched on the current status of his first DC movie.
“The whole thing is quite surreal. As much as we wanted to proceed, we wanted to make sure we were safe. We didn’t want anyone on our crew to get sick. But there was a crew member who actually got it, an incredible dialect coach named Andrew Jack, and he passed away. We were all in utter shock and heartbroken. It’s been weeks since we shut down, so I don’t think it was passed among the crew. But it’s very, very upsetting.”
On whether he’s considered returning to the set:
“Of course, [I want] to come back when the time is right. I’ve worked on a few things where, for various reasons, you have to stop for a moment — a cast member gets sick, and you have to shut down for a week. You can take stock of what you’ve done and prepare for what’s coming. I don’t think it’s a moment where I’m going, “Why aren’t we shooting?” I’m thinking, “There are bigger things.”
On how Warner Bros views the film overall:
“You never know whether the people in charge of those I.P.s [intellectual properties] are going to be open to your vision. But if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have done Batman. I was like, look, there have been some great Batman films and I don’t want to just make a Batman film. I want to do something that has some emotional stakes. My ambition is for it to be incredibly personal using the metaphors of that world. It feels like this really odd throwback to the movies I came up on from the ’70s, like Klute or Chinatown. I’m not saying we’re achieving anything like that. Those are masterpieces. But that’s the ambition.”
The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson in the title role, is currently scheduled for release on June 25, 2021. Stay tuned for further developments.
