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SYFY WIRE The Batman

The Batman gets a release date without Affleck, plus The Suicide Squad and more from WB

By Brian Silliman
SuicideSquadHarley

Time to break out your Bat-calendars, because a slew of release dates just got announced by Warner Bros. Not only that, but the age of Batfleck seems to be officially over.

According to Deadline, June 25, 2021, is the next time we'll be seeing the Caped Crusader on our movie screens. Still titled The Batman, the movie will be directed and written by Matt Reeves and will be produced by Reeves and Dylan Clark. Deadline also reports, after a year of speculation, that Ben Affleck will not appear in the film.

Reeves will be telling a story based on a younger version of Bruce Wayne (one not based on the comic Batman: Year One), so the time has come for Affleck to pass the cape, cowl, and Batcave key to a new actor. Who that actor is, exactly, is unknown. Deadline reports that "a search is underway" for a new Dark Knight.

Affleck seemed to confirm the news via Twitter, retweeting Deadline's report and writing, "Excited for #TheBatman in Summer 2021 and to see [Matt Reeves'] vision come to life."

In other DC news, Deadline also reports that the sequel to Suicide Squad will be released on Aug. 6, 2021, just a little over a month and some change from The Batman. It seems to be going along with the "The" notion in its title, as the film will be called The Suicide Squad. It will be produced by Charles Roven and Peter Safran, and will use a script written by former MCU stalwart James Gunn.

Other dates announced include DC Super Pets coming at you on May 21, 2021, which will be directed by Jared Stern and Sam Levine. On the non-DC side of things, Doctor Sleep (the sequel to The Shining) is being pushed up from its original 2020 release date— it will now be released on November 8 of this year. Robert Zemeckis' new take on the classic Roald Dahl story The Witches got a date as well, which will be Oct. 16, 2020. Anne Hathaway is set to star, and producers on the film will include Zemeckis, Guillermo del Toro, and Alfonso Cuaron.

There are also two "Untitled WB event films" that were announced— one for July 16, 2021, and the other for October 1, 2021. What these movies could be are anyone's guess, but who doesn't love a good event film?