Thanks to the effort of Christopher Nolan and his seminal Dark Knight trilogy, the character, and by extension many other comic book characters, began to lean towards being 'dark' and 'gritty' to such an extent that that's all the genre became. With Matt Reeves' The Batman due for release next year, cinematographer Greig Fraser has teased the darkness of the movie, suggesting that it won't all be clouded in shadow, at least, not visually.

"It's a good question and it's a question we ask ourselves. I can't talk specifically of course. There's darkness in the character for sure and we need to create a mood, which is obvious, it's a Batman film. I don't think it's going to be oppressively dark in terms of visually, because that's not what we're trying to (do). We're not trying to have a competition about who can go the darkest of the darkest of the darkest. We're trying to create intrigue. I love the way some of the comics look. You can see relatively quite clearly in those graphic novels."

So, it sounds like Fraser is more interested in creating a gloomy atmosphere, rather than a gloomy image, with the cinematographer turning to the source material for inspiration. It's certainly promising to hear that The Batman is not attempting to compete with any other the other interpretations, which will hopefully lead to something wholly different from what we have seen from the DC icon in the past.

Fraser recently divulged some information about the upcoming comic book movie saying, "It is a character-based movie about the characters, about Andy Serkis' character and Robert Pattinson's character. It's a very good script, like all of Matt's scripts it's very good, very well thought out."

Thanks to new health and safety sanctions, The Batman is due to return to filming in the UK soon, and though there are currently very few specific details regarding the plot, Reeves did reveal some time ago that the movie will be a noir-driven story that highlights Bruce Wayne's detective skills, which have rarely been featured in past movies. What we do know about the story so far is that The Batman will take place around two years into the eponymous protagonist's crime-fighting career. It's also been strongly indicated that the story is inspired by the fan-favorite graphic novel The Long Halloween, which saw Batman tracking down a serial killer and running into many of his iconic adversaries along the way.

Tenet star Robert Pattinson will be suiting up as the Caped Crusader, with the rest of cast including the likes of Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as Riddler, Colin Farrell as Penguin, Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard as Gil Colson and Jeffery Wright as Commissioner Gordon. The Batman is expected to resume production in London soon after a shutdown in March called for a temporary halt, with the movie scheduled to be released on October 1, 2021.

This comes to us courtesy of Collider. The topper art comes from @v2vdesigns on Instagram.