Director Matt Reeves said he starts filming 'The Batman 2' next year. Here's what we know so far.

• Matt Reeves is gearing up to start filming "The Batman 2" in 2025.
• Robert Pattinson will reprise his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman for the sequel.
• The director said it will also connect to "The Penguin" TV series.

It's been over two years since Matt Reeves threw audiences into his grim version of Gotham City with "The Batman," which stars Robert Pattinson as the titular Caped Crusader.

In the first gloomy, David Fincher -inspired comic book movie, Pattinson's vigilante faces the Riddler (Paul Dano), who targets corrupt members of the city council and the authorities in a brutal killing spree.

While the Bat cements himself as a hero to Gotham's citizens, he doesn't manage to save the day completely. In fact, The Riddler changes Gotham forever at the end of the film with a terror attack that floods the city.

This version of the DC universe will be explored even further in "The Penguin" TV series, which picks up immediately after the film's explosive climax. The show will help bridge the gap to "The Batman 2," which was announced at CinemaCon in 2022 .

Here's everything we know about the sequel.

"The Batman 2" will start filming in 2025, and connects to "The Penguin" TV series.

When speaking to the October edition of SFX magazine (per Variety ) Reeves confirmed that "The Batman 2" will start filming in 2025, and the script is almost finished.

"The plan is to shoot next year, and we're finishing up the script now," he said. "Colin [Farrell] will be part of the movie. We've shared [the script] as we've been going along with DC and the studio and they're super excited."

Colin Farrell played shady monster Oz Cobb in the first film, and he reprised the role in "The Penguin" TV series on HBO. It will deal with the power vacuum in Gotham's underworld following the death of crime lord Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) at the end of the movie.

Reeves called TV series the "entry point" into "The Batman 2."

"There are details that actually connect right into the way the next movie begins, and the way that Oz enters that world as we hand the baton back to Batman, and Batman is on another case," he said.

"The Batman 2" will build on Robert Pattinson's first turn as the Caped Crusader.

During the same interview with SFX, Reeves teased that Batman will continue to tackle corruption on a much deeper level than in the first film.

He said it's "going to dig into the epic story about deeper corruption, and it goes into places that he couldn't anticipate in the first one. The seeds of where this goes are all in the first movie, and it expands in a way that will show you aspects of the character you never got to see."

Reeves added: "Batman is constantly battling these forces. But those forces can't be entirely exorcised. So the next movie delves deeper into that."

"The Batman 2" will release in 2026.

The bad news is that fans still have a pretty long wait until the next chapter in the Battinson/R-Batz saga arrives on the big screen.

The sequel was originally slated for release on October 3, 2025, but it was delayed by a year until October 2, 2026, because of the 2023 strikes, according to The Hollywood Reporter . But the fall release date makes sense for the moody vigilante, especially since it seems to be permanently raining in Gotham.

It'll be interesting to see how much "The Batman 2" makes at the box office, as the first film proved successful in its March 2022 release, earning $770 million (via Box Office Mojo ).

Robert Pattinson and Colin Farrell will return for "The Batman 2" but the rest of the cast is unconfirmed.

Deadline reported that Pattinson has signed on for "The Batman 2," and Reeves confirmed that Farrell will also be involved.

It's probable that many of his co-stars will also reprise their roles, but they're unconfirmed.

Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz) left the dreary city behind at the end of the first film, but it seems likely that she'll be back for the sequel considering the palpable chemistry she had with Pattinson's Caped Crusader.

And fans can surely expect to see Jeffrey Wright as Lt. James Gordon — since Batman works closely with him on criminal investigations — as well as Andy Serkis' version of Bruce's faithful butler, Alfred Pennyworth.

But who will Bats be up against?

Matt Reeves previously said he'd like to see a "grounded" version of Mr. Freeze.

Like many superheroes, Batman fights a colorful array of bad guys in the comics, but some are more outlandish than others. During the 2024 SFX interview, the director explained that he's planning to keep things "grounded."

"What was important to me was to find a way to take these pop icons, these mythical characters that everybody knows, and translate it so that Gotham feels like a place in our world," Reeves said. "We might push to the edge of the fantastical but we would never go into full fantastical. It's meant to feel quite grounded."

Reeves also shot down fan speculation that a villain called Gentleman Ghost would be involved with the sequel, stating that the spiritual bad guy doesn't fit his take on Gotham.

"It doesn't mean that you won't see characters that people love. That's exactly what we want to do. Gentleman Ghost is probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do, but there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that," he continued.

In February 2022, the director told Collider that he'd love to see how Mr. Freeze would work in a realistic setting.

"In my view, I just feel drawn to finding the grounded version of everything," he said. "So to me it would be a challenge in an interesting way to try and figure out how that could happen, even the idea of something like Mr. Freeze, that such a great story, right?"

It's also not clear if Barry Keoghan will reprise his role as the Joker after his brief cameo alongside the Riddler in Arkham Asylum. But the Irish star told GQ Magazine that he's interested in coming back.

"As soon as that call comes, I'm there man, I'm there," he said.

Robert Pattinson also wants to introduce Robin.

It's hard to imagine a young teenager fighting crime in Reeves' Gotham while wearing a bright red and green outfit, but that's exactly what Pattinson wants to see in the franchise's future.

He told the press, including Insider, at a 2022 Q&A : "He has to be 13. That's the only way I'll accept it."

Pattinson added that he'd love to see Jim Starlin's "Death in the Family" storyline on the big screen. In the 1988 series, the Joker kills the second Robin by beating him with a crowbar and leaving him to die in an explosion.

"I love 'Death in the Family' and stuff, but I think it'd be so cool," Pattinson said. "People are so scared of it, but it's kind of exciting. I think it would be a really fun addition."

Matt Reeves is also keen on the storyline and explained that he'd like to do it because the story is a scary concept.

"I also like 'Death in the Family,'" Reeves said at the same Q&A. "And I think the idea of being able to approach some of those stories and think how can we do this in a way that feels fresh and ground it in a way like, 'Look at the scary thing' and see if there's a way to do it."

He added: "The question is, will we be too scared? But, I think we should try."

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