Back in 2017, before the theatrical release of Joss Whedon’s cut of Justice League, there was still some hope for the DC film universe. Warner Bros. had announced a couple of Batfamily solo movies, with Batgirl directed by Joss Whedon and Chris McKay taking on Nightwing, respectively. With the Whedon Cut’s critical and commercial controversies stirring up, WB ended up regrouping, and many projects sort of disappeared. Recently, we learned that Batgirl was in active development with the hiring of a directorial team… but where does that leave the Nightwing movie? Is it still alive? Not quite, but there’s hope. McKay thinks that it’s “not lost yet.”
Though McKay signed on back in 2017, it seems that the Nightwing movie’s been languishing in development hell since, despite some exciting updates from McKay. In February of 2018, the director confirmed that the first draft of the flick was almost complete, but that they were taking their time on it. However, not long after, Whedon walked away from Batgirl and I believe that’s when development unofficially halted on the project. (Though there are rumors that it was postponed because of Matt Reeves’ The Batman.)
McKay has since moved on to direct his upcoming movie The Tomorrow War, which is set for release in July. While promoting his new flick, CinemaBlend took the opportunity to ask him about Nightwing on their podcast. His answer is fairly candid but hopeful. In McKay’s response, he indirectly confirms that the movie is not currently in active development, but that he thinks it’s still possible.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s not lost yet.”
Check out the video below:
He went on to say:
I hope it’s still a reality. I hope that we still get to make that movie. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not lost yet. It is obviously something that… they’ve had other priorities, they’ve had other challenges. They’d had things that they needed to do, and I think that they found their way. I think their recent successes, and the stuff that they are planning on doing now, I think it opens the door for us to still be able to do a Nightwing movie. Whether you call it ‘in an alternate universe’ or you pick in their multiverse version which universe it’s part of, there are different ways into it.
But Nightwing is a big, action-packed, emotional movie. It may not, budgetarily, be similar to what we do with The Tomorrow War. But from a scope and scale standpoint, as far as the kind of action and the kind of heart, that’s what Nightwing is going to be all about.
So yes, unfortunately, it’s not happening at the moment, but it seems that they haven’t officially canceled the project yet. Enough to leave McKay hopeful, at least. Maybe one day, we’ll see it. Being that McKay’s turn with DC characters in the LEGO Batman Movie was pretty darn memorable, we would have been in for a treat.
What do you think? Will we ever see a live-action Nightwing movie by Chris McKay? Or do you think it’s done and gone? Let us know.
Source – CinemaBlend