Now that it’s out there, I think you and I both agree that Batman: Caped Crusader lives up to the hype. It successfully revives the formula established in Batman: The Animated Series by changing just enough to keep it fresh yet still retaining what was timeless. It’s the BTAS revival we always wanted….but it turns out its creator had no intention of making such a thing.
For years the #1 demand fans had for Bruce Timm was that he go back and make new episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. but he’s never specifically returned to that style of storytelling until now. Ironically, a literal revival of BTAS is what Warner Bros asked for at first. And Timm turned it down.
A new interview with Timm on the website The Wrap reveals the project that would become Batman: Caped Crusader started when WB was just getting HBO Max set up and looking for attractive projects to draw in viewers. Timm was asked if he would revive BTAS with new episodes. “I’m like, ‘Nah, we’d been there, we’d done that.’ I wasn’t interested in just revisiting that world,” Timm says he told them.
Instead, Timm and executive producer James Tucker discussed the possibility of a new Justice League series. “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,” B.T. says.
Despite throwing around every DC superhero there was, the brainstorming session always returned to Batman and Batman stories, and Timm realized what he was really itching to do — something he’d been denied all this time. He says once Batman: The Animated Series entered real production at WB it “became something different” from his original vision, which was Batman as a dark loner. “kind of grim and more like the Shadow or the Avenger.”
From that point, the project became the Batman show Timm would’ve made if he could’ve, which it turns out wasn’t far off from what we initially got. “I wanted to blend the atmospherics of Universal horror movies and the drama of Warner Bros. gangster movies and the action of Republic serials and mix it all together with a lot of film noir on top.” The end product is fantastic, and it’s not over yet — Timm and Tucker say they’re still in production on the second season.
Batman: Caped Crusader is streaming now on Amazon Prime (and not Max because Zaslav deliberately let it get away).
