News & Notes

• Batman Begins writer and Super Max director David S. Goyer said in an interview that:
  

  A lot of the DC movies at Warner Brothers are all on hold while the figure out, they're going to come up with some new plan, methodology, things like that so everything has just been pressed pause on at the moment. It was the double header of both Iron Man and The Dark Knight coming out, so more than ever I think they've realized, I think DC was responsible for 50% of Warner Brother's revenue this year, something crazy like that, so they realized that comic books, it's become a new genre, one of the most successful genres.

  Of course, every site that linked to the interview seemed to read "A lot of the DC movies" as "all the DC movies" and went into a panic about the impact on all the superhero movies they were excited about. But there are plenty of reasons not to panic:
  
  
  • David S. Goyer is not the head of Warner Bros. so he may not know the whole story
  
  
  • Even if he does, his statement was vague about which projects were on hold.
  
  
  • Movie development is a slow, complicated process where getting upset about every little setback will drive you crazy.
  
  Rest assured, if Christopher Nolan walks into the studio tomorrow wanting to make another Batman movie, they'll be filming it as soon as schedules permit.


• More awards talk: The Dark Knight is nominated for major awards from the American Society of Cinematographers and from the Writers Guild of America. And it cleaned up at The People's Choice Awards, for whatever that's worth.


• And Bookslut ran an interview with Jason Lutes where he discussed an idea he pitched for a Batman story:
  

  The Batman was going to be called “The Ballad of the Bat.” And it was going to go back to the beginnings of the Batman during the Depression. It was going to treat him sort of like a folk hero and really try to treat it realistically in the context of what was happening in America then. [He would be] this mythical defender of the downtrodden and I imagined a bunch of hobos sitting around a fire singing “The Ballad of the Bat” about this guy who would save them from the railroad dick who was trying to keep them off the trains or whatever. Sort of like a Woody Guthrie character… (laughs) Totally absurd. It was going to work though.

  Batman beating up guys who mess with hobos? I'd read that in a second.