Bruce Timm revealed that he shot down the idea for a revival Batman: The Animated Series.
According to Timm, about four or five years ago, Warner Bros approached him with doing more episodes of BTAS. This was in anticipation of their streaming service HBO Max (or now just called Max). However, Timm was less enthused and ultimately declined his involvement.
“They said, ‘Hey, how would you feel about going back and making some more ‘B:TAS’ episodes?’ And I’m like, ‘Nah, we’d been there, we’d done that.’ I wasn’t interested in just revisiting that world.”
While from a consumer and a fan perspective, it makes sense to continue in that world. Nostalgia is hot commodity and fans still love BTAS. This is evidenced when DC published Batman: The Adventures Continue comic series that was in the same world. It could have been yet another revival in the same vein as Marvel’s X-Men ’97, which produced new episodes that continued the storylines for X-Men: The Animated Series.
However, given that Timm has done multiple revisits to the BTAS world- including comic spin-offs and animated features– he might be tired of doing the same thing again. This sentiment is reflected in Timm’s further comments. When the interviewer pointed out that Timm’s Justice League animated show was also set in the same universe as BTAS, Timm responded on how Justice League was a very different idea where he can explore way more DC characters, rather than just Batman.
“That was more of an open-ended concept that we could incorporate the entire DC canon in it, instead of doing just another Joker story, or just another Harley story or whatever.”
With that being said, Bruce Timm did clarify that he is interested in revisiting a different version of Batman. Hence, his involvement with the new animated series Batman: Caped Crusader.
It would have been awesome to see more episodes set in the proper DCAU. However, it makes sense that Timm creatively wants to stretch his muscles more. Meanwhile, you can now catch all 10 episodes of Batman: The Caped Crusader on Amazon Prime in North America.
Source: theWrap.com
All images maybe subject to copyright.