The DCU’s first Batman movie has been delayed

Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the movie that will introduce the caped crusader in James Gunn’s DCU, has been “postponed” according to the film’s director.

While Creature Commandos has soft-launched Gunn’s DCU, it will get its big-screen debut with Superman in 2025.

However, there’s plenty more on the horizon: Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow in June 2026, Clayface (written by Haunting of Hill House’s Mike Flanagan) in September 2026, and then The Authority and Swamp Thing somewhere down the line.

Notably, there’s The Brave and the Bold, which will follow the DCU’s Batman in a “strange father and son story”, as per Gunn. However, don’t expect to see it any time soon.

Andy Muschietti reveals Batman: The Brave and the Bold delay

While talking to California Secreta, Muschietti (who directed The Flash) revealed that The Brave and the Bold has been delayed, but it’s unclear for how long (to be clear, the movie has never had a set release date).

“The Batman project has been postponed a little bit so I might do another film before that,” he said.

This is an interesting development, given everything that’s been said after Gunn and Peter Safran took the reins at DC Studios.

For example, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said, “There’s not going to be four Batmans.” The DCEU is officially dead, so Ben Affleck won’t be reprising his role from the SnyderVerse.

And then there’s the small matter of The Batman Part 2, Robert Pattinson and Matt Reeves’ highly anticipated sequel. It falls under the Elseworlds umbrella, meaning while it’s part of the DCU, it won’t be part of the same continuity as Superman and Supergirl.

James Gunn “contemplated” making Robert Pattinson the DCU’s Batman

Warner Bros.

Earlier in December, Gunn appeared on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and he was asked if he’d incorporate Pattinson’s Batman into the DCU.

He explained: “I’ve contemplated it… these questions you can’t answer because people are too… they make everything to mean something. You’d be an idiot not to think, ‘How does this go, how does this go?’

“But I’m committed to both telling stories in the DCU and telling Elseworlds stories. I want the freedom to tell Elseworlds stories. We want to be able to tell a story in which Superman’s very different or tell a Red Son story or whatever. We want to be able to play with these characters in different ways.”

In another interview with Collider, Gunn said there’s “no set timeline” for Batman: The Brave and the Bold – or any DCU project in development, for that matter.

“The one thing that I’ve tried to make clear to people from the beginning, in the way that I hope we’re different, is that everything in DC is going to be based on the writers. Until we have a screenplay that I’m totally happy with, that movie is not going to get made, no matter what it is,” he explained.

“It’s going to be based always on that, on the story, because at the end of the day if we’re happy with the story that we’re telling, that’s what matters most. And once The Brave and the Bold gets to that point, then we’ll make the movie.”

In the meantime, check out our breakdown of every upcoming DC movie and our list of the best movies of 2024.