If there’s one thing Bruce Timm wants fans to understand about Batman: Caped Crusader, it’s that the new animated series is not a retread of its predecessor, Batman: The Animated Series. The new show may boast a similar aesthetic, but Caped Crusader is its own, unique beast.
That was the only way DC was going to coax Timm back behind the wheel of the Batmobile once again. Having produced BTAS and spinoffs like Batman Beyond, Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited, as well as animated movies like The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: The Killing Joke, one could be forgiven for assuming Timm has said all he needed to say about DC’s most popular hero. But even after all this time, and with all those projects under his belt, Timm saw the opportunity to do something new with Batman.
“Originally I'd had an idea about Batman where he was much more inspired by the old pulp heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow and The Avenger,” Timm tells IGN. “And the thing those three guys had in common was that they were all very remote. They were not nice guys, they weren't like people you'd want to hang out with necessarily. They weren't cuddly and cracking jokes and stuff. They were very kind of superhuman to the point of not being human. And so that's kind of how I always wanted to present Batman.”
“And by making him as remote as he was, that allowed us to put a little more emphasis on the supporting cast,” adds executive producer James Tucker, another prolific Batman creator whose previous work includes Batman: The Brave and the Bold. “It feels more like an ensemble piece because we're as invested in some of the other characters now as we are in Batman because they're the humans in the story now. He's kind of removed, and so everyone else gets a lot more shine - Alfred, the Gordons, Montoya. All the secondary characters step up in importance in the story.”
The result is a Batman series that hearkens back to the Dark Knight’s earliest comic book adventures. Visually and stylistically, Caped Crusader owes a clear debt to the work of Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger. Where BTAS depicted Gotham as a timeless Art Deco wonderland, Caped Crusader literally thrusts Batman (voiced here by Midnight Mass’ Hamish Linklater) back into the 1940s with a heavily Noir and pulp-flavored take on the franchise. Even with Batman’s long history of TV adaptations, this is a vision of Gotham City fans haven’t seen before on the small screen.
IGN can exclusively debut the trailer for Batman: Caped Crusader ahead of the show’s August debut. Feast your eyes on this new footage below, and keep reading to learn much more about the origins of the series, the search for the ideal Batman voice actor and the reason why this Dark Knight’s rogues gallery is so different from the norm.
The Origins of Batman: Caped Crusader
This revamped approach to Batman and his supporting cast wasn’t always the plan. In fact, originally Warner Bros. approached Timm with the idea of reviving Batman: The Animated Series and picking up where The New Batman Adventures left off in 1999 (something that’s been done on the comic book side with Batman: The Adventures Continue). Simply put, Timm wasn’t interested in more BTAS.
It was only when Tucker and Timm discussed the possibility of doing something new with the franchise that Timm began to warm to the idea of helming another Batman cartoon. “James and I were talking about it and James was saying, ‘Well, if you didn't want to go back and make new episodes of BTAS, was there anything that you didn't get to do the first time that you would rather do this time if you had the choice?’” Timm says. “We started talking about it, and it turned out there actually were a lot of things that, the more I started thinking back on, it was like, ‘Oh yeah.’ I had a completely different idea of what the world was like and what Batman himself was like.”
The new project really began to take shape when The Batman director Matt Reeves and Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams came aboard as executive producers. Timm says, “I started thinking a little bit more about what James and I were talking about and doing just a quickie elevator pitch of it, which was basically doing a show that was more based in the 1940s than even Batman: The Animated Series was, which was basically just kind of retro-ish but I really wanted to lean into that whole milieu.” Reeves and Abrams were supportive, and the new series truly began to take shape at that point.
For Timm, another part of the appeal with Caped Crusader is the freedom to tell a Batman story specifically for an older audience, without the need to worry about content or the need to sell action figures.
“We didn't have the same kind of limitations that we had back in the '90s where it was made specifically for a children's audience and we had to worry about making sure that would sell a certain number of toys,” Timm says. “So that was also appealing. Getting a chance to do the show without the same kind of limitations was also very, very exciting. But it was really more on the way we looked at Batman and getting to make him really radically different than most other versions of Batman you've ever seen before.”
That’s not to say Caped Crusader is only targeted at adults, or that the series is striving to be as bleak and gritty as Reeves’ live-action version of Gotham City. “We were taking influences from Universal horror movies, swashbuckler movies like Errol Flynn movies,” Tucker explains. “Basically the cool movies that would've been out in the late '30s, early '40s, that at the time wouldn't have been thought of as kids' movies or anything.”
As much as Timm and Tucker set out to craft a show that didn’t feel like a regurgitation of past Batman fare, creating a new visual style for the Dark Knight was also a huge focus. Those early Bob Kane comics served as useful inspiration, though as Timm reveals, that inspiration only went so far.
“Batman's look specifically for the show was definitely inspired by his first couple appearances,” Timm says. “My own personal challenge was to make him not look like BTAS Batman. So we definitely pulled some design motifs from those Bob Kane comics, but whenever I tried to be too literal with that, then suddenly it would just look weird, because those Bob Kane Batmans, he didn't have any jaw at all. From the bottom of his lip, it just went right down into his neck. So it was trying to find a way to keep it similar to those designs but not make it look as if it was drawn by Bob Kane or his ghosts.”
“Since I wasn't around for the original BTAS, I always felt that was a missed opportunity for me,” Tucker says. “I just wasn't out here in L.A., but I loved that show and I was like, ‘Oh, they're doing gangsters and film noir and I love it.’ When I actually got to do a Batman show, it was New Adventures, which had moved away toward the villains and stuff. So I feel this is like a full circle moment for me like, ‘Wow.’ I got to do the gangsters and the film noir influences and all that stuff.”
Finding the Voice of Batman
It goes without saying that one of the biggest challenges in crafting a new Batman animated series is finding a voice actor who can hold his own alongside greats like Diedrich Bader and the late Kevin Conroy. Given the BTAS connections, Conroy’s shadow loomed especially large over the project. Given that Conroy has voiced multiple incarnations of the Dark Knight across several animated and video game universes, was there ever any consideration given to having him reprise the role here?
The answer, it turns out, is a resounding no. Part of distancing Caped Crusader from BTAS involved finding a new voice actor who could redefine Batman for this pulpy throwback setting. Bringing back Conroy wasn’t an option.
“As much as I love Kevin, and as much as I always enjoyed working with him, I'd bring him back whenever I could, we felt that we kind of needed to go in a different direction with the show right away,” Timm explains. “I felt like the minute we brought Kevin back, if we had gone that way ... It's hard enough to get people to realize, ‘Yeah, we're not doing it again.’ It's a remix, not a reboot. It's not a remake or reboot. So we felt like right out of the gate that we needed to have somebody different to play him.”
Enter Linklater, an actor who’s risen to prominence in recent years on the strength of projects like Midnight Mass and The Crazy Ones, but one not known for his voiceover work.
“I was working on an indie movie in Minneapolis, and I got the audition,” Linklater says. “I had been a devoted, massive fan of the animated series that Bruce Timm did in the '90s. I mean, I was just like, ‘This is so freaking cool to get to audition for this.’ I sat in a car, and it was freezing cold in Minneapolis, but I couldn't have the heat on, I couldn't have the car on, so I could make good audio. I just did so many takes, not ever even remotely imagining that I would actually get cast.”
Timm reveals that it wasn’t necessarily Linklater’s Batman voice that got him the job, but rather his interpretation of Bruce Wayne. Much like in BTAS, finding that distinction between the grim, nocturnal vigilante and his carefree playboy persona was critical.
“It's strange, because when we first cast the original BTAS, we could not find anybody who could do a decent Batman voice until Kevin Conroy came in and nailed it,” Timm reveals. “But in the years since then, this go-round on when we did the auditions, we had lots of different actors who could do a really good Batman voice but nobody could do a good Bruce Wayne voice.”
Timm continues, “Amazingly, almost nobody else could come anywhere near what Hamish did, but Hamish was just dead-on. I mean, yeah, his Batman voice is great, too, but Batman doesn't require a lot of acting because this version of Batman... he's like a flat line.”
Therein lies the biggest difference between the Batman of BTAS and the one featured in Caped Crusader. Conroy’s Batman was defined by his compassion and latent humanity. He was a hero who empathized with his enemies and yearned for the day he could lay his cape and cowl down for good. By comparison, this new Batman is a single-minded soldier, one for whom Bruce Wayne is nothing more than a useful tool. The show embodies that old adage - Batman is the real person, and Bruce Wayne is his mask.
“The trick with this one is this version of Bruce Wayne isn't really who he is,” Timm says. “He's literally Batman, like 24/7. When he's out and about in Gotham City, supposedly as Bruce Wayne, it's a construct. That's a completely fake person suit that he's created. That version of Bruce Wayne and his voice is extra charming. It's like he's watched a million Cary Grant movies to study how to be a dashing, upper class playboy. So his Bruce Wayne voice isn't just okay, that's what he sounds like when he takes the mask off. No, that's a fake voice. He's pretending to be a charming playboy.”
“I think he's charming but there's also an element of weirdness around it,” Tucker says. “Because it is a performance of a kind, but it is such a tricky tightrope to walk, and Hamish really brought it out.”
“I sort of tried to think how would Batman play a socialite man about town, like what would his version of that be?” Linklater says. “And that's where my Bruce Wayne came from, sort of from that outside-in or inside-out perspective. How does Batman imagine 1940s Lothario sounds?”
Unsurprisingly, Linklater found it intimidating to take on a role so thoroughly defined by Conroy in the ‘90s and ‘00s.
“Really, I just wanted to honor the legacy of Kevin and of Batman,” Linklater says. “I felt like the baton has been placed in my hand, and the important thing is not to drop it before I'm asked to pass it off to the next runner. You just want to do good service to the tradition. But, yeah, Kevin Conroy - he is arguably the greatest Batman in any iteration, any media that we've had. So a huge shadow, certainly.”
Reinventing Batman’s Rogues Gallery
Caped Crusader may present a fairly different take on Batman and Bruce Wayne compared to previous shows, but ultimately, the basics are still the same. This is an orphaned millionaire who’s sworn to wage war on superstitious and cowardly criminals by dressing like a giant bat. Where the new series really begins to distinguish itself is with the villains. Fans of BTAS may find characters like Clayface, Harley Quinn and Penguin almost unrecognizable in this new series. That was very much the point.
“Even if a BTAS version of those characters were a 100% successful, we just didn't want to use those versions again. So we had to change everything,” Timm says. “The trick with Harley was that we had an idea. Right off the bat, we wanted to say, ‘Well, let's not make her the Joker's henchwoman.’ And if we separate them like that, what does that leave you with? What else can we do with her? And so that put us in a space where we're exploring different avenues with that character.”
Timm continues, “Which is not a critique of the BTAS Harley. I mean, I love that version of the character, obviously, but it was just a challenge. It's a kind of cool challenge. You might think that we're changing something just to change it. But it was never about that; it was more about where will it lead us? Will it lead us to do something new? And I think somebody early on said, ‘Well, if we did a flip on her where Harleen Quinzel is the more fun one and the Harley Quinn version is more dark and serious,’ suddenly that was more interesting. And she actually is using her psychology background as a weapon. That informs what she's doing as Harley Quinn. That was kind of interesting to us.”
“All the villains come to you with a totally fresh take,” Linklater says. “I mean, it's a real exciting surprise for the series. I don't want to take anything away from people's enjoyment of discovery, but there's going to be a lot to discover about each one of the characters. And the actors who are playing them are just all phenomenal. Bruce invented Harley Quinn in the original series, so yeah, he's got every right to do what [he wants]. I mean, the character is really cool this time around.”
Harley may be the most radically changed villain in Season 1 of the series, but plenty of thought was also given to the all-important Batman/Catwoman dynamic. As Timm reveals, the mantra of doing something different with the franchise fueled the show’s depiction of Selina Kyle as a lawbreaking cat burglar more in line with the character’s early Golden Age appearances.
“Catwoman in most mass media lately is kind of descended from the version that Ed Brubaker came up with, with Darwyn Cooke, where she's not as much of a villain as more of a dark adventuress with the leather costume. She's more of an anti-hero than a villain,” Timm says. “And that's great. We love that version of the character too, but we just didn't want to do that, because that's kind of the same version that Christopher Nolan did in his movie and Matt Reeves is doing in his movie.”
Timm continues, “Not only that, but also it kind of plays into this Batman's character. Traditionally, Batman and Catwoman are tied together romantically. How do we do a different version of that in here, because our guy is so closed off. We kept calling him, ‘He's more Spock than Spock.’ And I think James was the one during the pitch meeting who said, ‘What if he goes through pon farr? What if she activates his pon farr?’ It's like he doesn't really have romantic feelings for people so closed off from his humanity, but there's something about Catwoman that kind of triggers that and it's like, ‘I can't focus on my war against crime while this woman's out there running around town, so I got to deal with that.’ Again, it's different but also there's a point to it.”
As the trailer shows, much of Caped Crusader’s first season also hinges on the rivalry between Batman and the GCPD. Characters like Commissioner Gordon, Detective Renee Montoya and District Attorney Harvey Dent play key roles in the series, and not all of them are thrilled about Gotham’s new vigilante menace.
“Again, that goes back to what I wanted to do on BTAS.” Timm says. “I really like those first couple of episodes of BTAS where he's being chased around by the cops… They look at him and go, ‘What is this guy? He's getting in our way. We're chasing after these villains and this guy in the Dracula costume shows up and gets in our way.’ And again, that goes back to the comics. I liked that The Shadow and The Spider were always on the run from the cops. So I think that's kind of fascinating. And also Batman: Year One, the Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli comic, I love that idea that he's not the guy who shows up at the crime scene and in front of everybody and consults with the cops. It's like, no, he's creepy. He hides and does his detective work in the dark and reluctantly works with the cops.”
Compared to fellow Fox Kids luminary X-Men: The Animated Series, Batman: The Animated Series was never an especially narrative-driven show. Most episodes were standalone and self-contained in nature. Caped Crusader, by comparison, will strike a happy medium between those two approaches. While individual episodes will still tell relatively standalone stories, there will be certain narrative throughlines anchoring the ten-episode first season.
“Every episode has kind of a standalone A plot, but then there's certain plot threads that we call the soap opera plots that weave in and out of the first season,” Timm explains. “Harvey Dent's storyline is a big part of it. Barbara, her relationship with her dad and how she comes to end up being a reluctant ally of Batman, that kind of weaves its way in through the stories as well. And Montoya as well. So it's a little bit serialized. It helps if you watch them in order, but each one is also more of a standalone episode. It's kind of like Buffy in that respect. Buffy was designed to be that way, where there'd be a monster of the week but then there was also kind of a season-long arc as well. That's kind of what we're doing.”
Batman: The Animated Series is notable for birthing the larger DC Animated Universe, one which eventually grew to encompass the Justice League and dozens of DC heroes both iconic and obscure. Fans shouldn’t necessarily expect the same to hold true for Caped Crusader. The focus is strictly on Gotham and Batman himself. Even sidekicks like Robin and Batgirl are a low priority for now, to say nothing of potential cameo opportunities like Superman or the Justice Society.
“Again, not wanting to repeat ourselves, we did that last time,” Timm says. “We ended up with Batman and the Superman show and then Justice League, etc, etc. And that's what everybody does now. Every film, every superhero franchise, leads into their own universe, and we've done that. So I don't really have any interest in doing that at all again this time. So I'll just say that the current plans are for there to not be any other costume superheroes in this world. At all.”
“Also, pragmatically, this is 10 episodes so far. If we get to 100 or however many BTAS got to, then maybe yeah, who knows?” Tucker says. “But we're nowhere near that yet. So people forget these are shorter seasons and we want to spend time with Batman being the guy for as long as we can.”
Luckily, Bat-fans are in store for more than just one ten-episode season. Prime Video gave Batman: Caped Crusader a two-season order when it picked up the series from Warner Bros. in 2023. Production has already begun on Season 2, and Linklater is hard at work recording his lines.
“We've just started Season 2,” Linklater teases. “It's great to have a little bit more confidence going into it, because the new episodes are mind-blowing.”
All ten episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader’s first season will premiere on Prime Video on August 1.
Jesse Schedeen is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
