Production on The Batman: Part II has been temporarily halted after director Matt Reeves stepped away from the project to deal with family circumstances, Warner Bros and DC Studios announced. It is the latest setback for the film, whose release date has been postponed more than once and is now scheduled for February 2028.
Production halted over Matt Reeves’ family circumstances
DC Studios said in a statement that work on the film had been temporarily suspended while Reeves focused on a family matter. It said the director had the studio’s full support during this period and expressed its hope of resuming work on the project soon. Filming on the new instalment began in the British capital, London, in June, and later moved to locations in Glasgow.
Some filming locations in the city were modified to appear on screen as streets in the fictional city of Gotham, where the Batman story is set. The production halt follows a series of changes to the film’s schedule, as Reeves and Mattson Tomlin continue working on the screenplay.
Repeated delays and the current release date
After the first delay, DC Studios head James Gunn defended the decision, saying that long gaps between instalments of major film franchises were common. Gunn cited several well-known films whose successive instalments were separated by years. Details of the new film’s plot remain under wraps, but it is expected to take place after the 2024 series The Penguin.
The series itself followed the events of the 2022 film The Batman. Robert Pattinson will reprise the role of Batman in Part II, alongside Jeffrey Wright as Detective Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth and Colin Farrell.
Pattinson said in a previous interview that the new film offered a different approach from the first instalment, describing the project as highly ambitious. He added that it marked a clear shift from the previous film while retaining some of the elements that defined the atmosphere of the first instalment.
The first The Batman reached cinemas in March 2022 and took more than 772 million dollars worldwide. In recent months, the slow progress on Part II fuelled speculation that the project might be cancelled, before filming was announced and production was then temporarily halted.
