Matt Reeves’ Working Title of ‘The Batman’ Isn’t Original But It is Telling

Considering how long Matt Reeves’ production of yet, another reboot featuring the Cape and the Cowl, it’s miraculous more hasn’t been leaked about what is destined to be either a Magnum Opus of CBM creativity or one colossal fart-and-fall-down moment among a few other stinkers in DC’s and WB’s history.

We have a cast, a theme, and even a novel approach as “the world’s greatest detective.” Yet, this week we were fed something either completely bewildering or revealing — the movie’s Working Title.

Thanks to Production Weekly, an industry magazine that has positioned itself as an insider’s rag in Hollywood, we see that the working title for the film is Vengeance.

A Familiar Tone

Let’s be clear: The movie is not called The Batman: Vengeance. A “working title” is some surreptitious moniker production houses use to foil any attempt at leaks about current projects during filming. Although social media and people with fat traps, working titles aren’t what they used to be.

What “Vengeance” was in the world of the Caped Crusader was actually a campy, 32-bit video game at the turn of the century with awful graphics and a storyline to boot.

Fortunately for archive purposes, the 2001 video game was not based on the “Batnips” version of Batman movies. Rather, the game was based on Paul Dini and Bruce Timm’s popular cartoon series.

So?! 

Bruce Wayne is a man of many things, but most of it is fueled by… yes, vengeance. He longs to find justice for his slain parents. He is fueled by a quest to quiet Gotham’s criminal underworld. And, maybe most telling, whether it’s as millionaire playboy, Sherlock Holmes starter kit, or the masked vigilante, he is drawn by an internal creed as the city’s protector.

No one fights on behalf of a city if there isn’t a little tinge of vengeful motivation. 

An Untold Mythos

Kevin Smith, “Fatman” podcaster and known “leaker” for anything CBMs, once unveiled a rumor about Matt Reeves’ secretive project. Smith shared he heard Reeves extolling the source of his inspiration for a Batman noir concept — the prolific murder-mystery comic Batman: A Long Halloween.

There is a murderer loose, and he or she only kills during holidays. This premise has inspired many other depictions of Batman, spanning cartoons to comic strips and most recently, the Nolanverse, particularly the face-off with the Falcone and Maroni crime families in Batman Begins. And, when a city goes on full paranoid alert, who better to search and stop this ice-cold killer?

Oh yeah, that also shows Bruce Wayne is motivated by vengeance. 

So, the next time there are leaked images of The Batman, look for the slates. If we see “Vengeance” written down, it’s almost certain that would be part of this intriguing project.

Certainly, we can probably deduce this will not be an origin story. Rather, we are going to watch from the “World’s Greatest Detective” use his moxie and mental acuity to solve a murder, foil an under-handed crime, and show how the son of Gotham is driven by a sense of retribution.