During Robbie Amell’s panel at this weekend’s Salt Lake Comic Con, the actor managed to tackle The Tomorrow People, The X-Files and a fan’s question about whether he would be willing to play Terry McGinnis in a Batman Beyond movie.
“I am a huge fan of that idea,” Amell said of the Batman Beyond concept. “I think the problem is because they have Batman going on right now, they won’t make the Batman Beyond movie until I’m too old to be Terry McGinnis. By then I’ll probably be the old, crusty Batman. But I’m a huge fan of that idea. I think it would be a great property. I think the smartest idea for them would be to make it like a $30 million movie. Don’t do like a $200 million blockbuster, do a dark, gritty version of Batman Beyond. The visual effects have come so far that you don’t need $200 million to show the technology that they have. Make it a nice, grounded character piece. But I don’t run studios, so that means nothing.”
While a Batman Beyond movie would seem like an odd choice, this isn’t the first time the idea has come up. A few years ago, producer Michael Uslan said that he’d like to see one with Clint Eastwood as the aging Bruce Wayne. Director Boaz Yakin was being considered for a Batman Beyond adaptation as far back as about 2000, when he said he pitched it as a companion to Darren Aranofsky’s Batman Year One film (the latter never happened either, but transformed into Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins).
A “dark and gritty” take on the character is actually what DC Entertainment is doing right now in the comics, where Tim Drake has taken over from Terry McGinnis, who died during The New 52: Futures End. Drake is in a more dangerous version of Neo-Gotham, this one infused with elements from Jack Kirby’s Great Disaster timeline.
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