Brooding knight returns: Matt Reeves says Batman movie will be emotional, grown-up

Reeves, who is gearing up for his upcoming directorial War for the Planet of the Apes, discusses his vision for the Batman movie starring Ben Affleck.

Director Matt Reeves says his Batman movie is going to be emotional, grown-up and ambitious.

Batman lead Ben Affleck gave up on directing the film.

Reeves is taking on the superhero standalone movie for DC, after Ben Affleck departed from the director’s chair.

In an interview to Digital Spy, Reeves, who is gearing up for his upcoming directorial War for the Planet of the Apes, discusses his vision for the Batman movie.

“(The studio) came to me and said, ‘Would you be interested?’ That’s kind of like what happened here with Apes, they said, ‘Would you be interested?’ and I was like, ‘Well, I would be interested but for me I have to find a personal way in,’“ he explained how he came on board.

“It gives you the freedom to smuggle into a movie that is otherwise grand summer entertainment... There’s a bleakness to it, there’s a reality to it, there’s a roundedness to it. We’re holding a mirror up to ourselves, we’re looking at ourselves in these apes’ faces and I feel the same potential in Batman.”

Drawing comparisons between the Dark Knight and Caesar, the lead character in the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy, Reeves says, “As Caesar is part of the Apes franchise, the Apes franchise was a huge part of my childhood, and Batman was a huge part of my childhood too, yet weirdly both of them have the potential of speaking not down to an audience but being ambitious.

“I think the thing that I’m excited about is the idea of trying to tell a very point-of-view-driven, emotional story from that perspective in the same way that I tried to do with Caesar. I think there’s a way to tell his story that could be very emotional.”

Follow @htshowbiz for more