Amid a couple of big date announcements, Warner Bros has delayed Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II into 2026 following challenges bought on by last year’s strikes.
We’re almost a year on from the beginning of the writers’ strike, the labour shutdown that pre-empted US actors also withdrawing their talents in one of the most contentious labour disputes ever to hit Hollywood. The writers would strike until September of last year, but in those five months of downed pens, quills and laptops, plenty of projects were significantly derailed.
One of those projects is Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II. Originally slated to release next summer, Warner Bros has announced that the film has now been pushed back a full year from October 2025 to October 2026.
As of a couple of months ago, James Gunn, the head honcho in the DCU, was still waiting for Reeves (and co-writer Mattson Tomlin) to deliver a script – although Gunn did confirm via Threads that he had had heard a pitch for the film.
It’s quite possible that in the intervening weeks Reeves has delivered his script, but The Batman Part II is set to boast quite the ensemble, so assembling that cast in the wake of the scheduling mayhem caused by last year’s strikes could also have caused problems. Not to mention the extensive pre-production work that will need to be completed.
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Robert Pattinson, Zoë Kravitz, Andy Serkis, Jeffrey Wright, Colin Farrell and, likely, Barry Keoghan as The Joker are all set to appear in the sequel.
As for the vacated 2025 slot, the studio was quick to plug the gap with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! We believe that this will be Maggie Gyllenhaal’s take on The Bride Of Frankenstein and as well as boasting a talented director, the rumours regarding casting for this project are rather exciting.
Penélope Cruz is said to potentially be in the title role, Christian Bale will co-star as Victor Frankenstein and Peter Saarsgard (who featured in Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter) will also appear. Annette Benning and Jessie Buckley are also said to be in the project’s impressive cast of players.
That’s a more than adequate replacement for Warner Bros to add to its summer 2025 slate, not least because the studio also announced that Paul Thomas Anderson’s untitled next film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, now has an August 8th 2025 release date. All of the films above are believed to have secured IMAX runs too, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
We’ll bring you more news on any of these projects as we hear it.
