New 'The Batman' Comic Book Set Collects The Stories That Inspired Director Matt Reeves
In anticipation of director Matt Reeves' new film The Batman opening in 2022, DC Comics is releasing a collection of the classic comics that inspired the film and its filmmaker. DC Connect magazine revealed the first look at the new The Batman Box Set, which includes softcover editions of the three books Reeves named as inspirations for the new movie.
Bring Home the Bat
The Batman Box Set will contain softcover editions of Reeves' biggest inspirations for his new film: Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Batman: The Long Halloween, Darwyn Cooke's Batman Ego and Other Tails, and Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's influential origin story Batman: Year One. The three books are housed in a slipcase box with art by Jim Lee.
The box set retails for $63.00 and goes on sale on March 1, 2022, just three days before The Batman premieres in theaters on March 4, 2022. Robert Pattinson stars as playboy philanthropist Bruce Wayne and his crime-fighting alter-ego, Batman.
Reeves named the above trio of books, along with The Long Halloween sequel Batman: Dark Victory, as some of his favorite Batman stories in a 2018 tweet. He later said that The Batman is not an adaptation of any particular comic arc, but is its own "noir-driven, definitive Batman story."
Not "Year One"
"Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One," Reeves told press at the Television Critics Association in 2018. He added that his movie is not an origin story, but would still 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."
If you want to be specific, Bruce Wayne is in year two of his career as the caped crusader when we meet him in The Batman.
"I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favorite comics. Those all inform by osmosis," Reeves added. "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."
In addition to Pattinson, The Batman stars Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as the Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as James Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, and Colin Farrell as Oswald "the Penguin" Cobblepot.