While the newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery is still attempting to straighten out its tumultuous DC Extended Universe, it’s important to point out that Todd Phillips’ Joker tapped into an exciting new avenue for DC Films in 2019. Much like DC Comics’ Black Label imprint, more isolated “Elseworlds” stories could have a place in the Hollywood blockbuster space.
The likes of Mr. Freeze don’t seem to be out of the question for The Batman‘s sequel, but villains like Clayface and Man-Bat would likely do best in their respective sandboxes where they’re allowed to get as weird as possible. Fleshing out the DC Films catalog with anthology-style movies would, in a way, be the best of both worlds when it comes to Batman and Batman-adjacent representation in live-action.
Likewise, it could deliver some clever metacommentary with Karlo himself being an actor, and an actor gradually losing his mind and sense of morality under the weight of expectation and his own ego. Man-Bat in a full-blown monster movie If a Clayface movie would only partly be a horror movie, then one centered around Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat would be a full-blown horror/monster feature. There’s still excitement over Reeves being able to create grounded versions of more sci-fi/out-there villains like Freeze in his Batman universe, but Man-Bat admittedly seems like too much of a stretch for what the director is going for.