Take a moment, please, to pour out a cold one for Bruce Wayne’s poor back. It might just be us, but it feels like the Bat-sacroiliac can’t go a full decade these days without some ambitious filmmaker deciding it’s time to snap the sucker in two; poor bastard breaks it more often than he breaks his pledge to stop tossing teenagers in brightly colored pajamas at guys who think a comedy routine is beating a minor to death with a crowbar.
This reflection brought to you by news that Warner Bros. Animation is moving forward with plans for a new animated adaptation of Batman: Knightfall, the comic book that set the template for so many Bat-traction stories to come. Originally published in 1993, the comic introduced a new Batman villain, Bane, who enacted a brilliant plan to make The Bat very, very tired by hunting down escaped supervillains, then wrassled him into submission, followed very swiftly by wrassling him into full-blown knee-delivered paralysis.
If that sounds kind of familiar, it’s because Christopher Nolan rough-strokes’d the story wholesale for his 2012 trilogy finale film The Dark Knight Rises. The new films, announced at New York Comic-Con today, sound like they’ll take a more traditionalist take on the plot, though, sending Bats through the ringer before his ultimate confrontation with the hulking Bane. (It’s also noted to be just Part 1, suggesting we’ll also get elements from follow-up comics KnightQuest, and KnightsEnd, which dared to ask the question, “What if your replacement Batman was crazy, murderous and French?”)
Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall, besides using up our whole surplus of “k’s,” “l,’s” and “:’s” for the year, is being directed by Jeff Wamester, who’s handled a lot of Warner Bros. Animation’s DC Comics adaptations in recent years, including the three-part spin on Crisis On Infinite Earths. No word yet on casting, but the studio has pretty consistently tapped Supernatural star Jensen Ackles for animated Bat-duty in recent years. The film itself is due out in 2026, and, if this little sub-franchises’ usual track record holds, will be released on physical media as well as being direct-to-streaming.
