With DC Studios keeping busy this year with live-action releases like Supergirl and Clayface in their feature film slate and the upcoming television series Lanterns, it’s easy to forget about the animated projects in development. The new DC Universe’s launching pad was the television series Creature Commandos, an animated project that, when compared to the follow-up project Superman, showcases how varied James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new continuity can be. There haven’t been many updates about other animated projects up until this point, with plenty of new developments being revealed as part of a press release as part of an animation festival.
Warner Bros. Animation is participating in The Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France in June, with a press release detailing many of their upcoming animated projects. Interestingly, many of those projects are a part of the DC Studios slate, as Co-Chairman Peter Safran will be a part of a panel that will discuss “the next era of DC animation.” One of the more exciting reveals was that the film festival will hold the premiere for the next Batman animated film, as well as a panel featuring the creative teams behind other projects such as Mister Miracle, Creature Commandos, My Adventures with Green Lantern, Starfire, and more.
Titled Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall, the animated movie is stated as being a part of a multipart DC animated event, adapting the storyline of the same name from the comics. The iconic comic book story sees Batman being pushed to his physical and psychological limits by Bane, who unleashes The Dark Knight’s rogues gallery all at once. With the first part of the story focusing on Batman capturing many of his iconic villains, the first movie in this adaptation will more than likely do the same. Moreover, the Knightfall storyline is best known for a moment at the end of the first part of the story, which sees Bane break Batman’s back.
There have been many DC animated projects that have adapted iconic Batman story arcs from the comic books, such as the two-part adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns, which saw RoboCop’s Peter Weller voice an aged Bruce Wayne who comes out of retirement to take up his war on crime once more. Most recently, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s comic Batman: The Long Halloween was also adapted into two films, which received positive reviews for its animation and how skillfully it adapted the story.
It has not yet been revealed how many films Warner Bros. and DC Studios will take to adapt the remainder of the Knightfall storyline, though the comic itself was split up into three oversized volumes to collect the story for trade paperback purchase. Batman’s fall and rise back to take his mantle has long been one of the more well-known stories in the character’s rich history, as part of it was even used as an inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s final film in his Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. It will be interesting to see the story take on new life in an entirely different medium, as well as see the first reactions to the movie from viewers at the Annecy Animation Film Festival.
