While the whole Warner Bros. animated superhero franchise is a world unto itself, and something we haven’t really covered at all, when it comes to an adaptation of Frank Miller‘s canonical and hugely influential “Batman: Year One” it can’t be ignored. The story takes place shortly after the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents and tracks the young crime-fighter’s first steps into becoming the masked superhero, and as everyone knows by now, Darren Aronofsky briefly worked on bringing it to the big screen in the early aughts, but Warner Bros. shelved the idea at the time. Well, Miller’s tale is finally getting the animated movie treatment, and it looks promising.
A trailer for the film has now landed, and it looks like it will deliver on Miller’s dark tone (complete with a PG-13 rating) while retaining the animated look of Batman that has more or less stayed the same throughout the WB productions. And that score by Christopher Drake sounds pretty damn good. Bryan Cranston, Ben McKenzie, Eliza Dushku, Katee Sackhoff and Alex Rocco lead the voice cast with McKenzie voicing Bruce Wayne; Cranston as James Gordon; Dushku as Catwoman; Sackhoff as Sarah Essen; and Rocco as Carmine Falcone. Lauren Montgomery (”Green Lantern: First Flight”) and Sam Liu (”The Batman”) co-directed the film.
“Batman: Year One” premieres at Comic-Con later this month before going to DVD, Blu-ray and On Demand on October 18th. And oh yeah, the movie will also feature a 15-minute standalone “Catwoman” short as well featuring Dushku squaring off against a new villain, Rough Cut. Check out the trailer below. [MTV]
I\’m really looking forward to this. In general the Warner Bros DC animated movies have been fairly solid, the stand out for me being Justice League: The New Frontier (this went period before X-men First Class). I also enoyed All Star Superman.
Anyway I love this trailer and it\’s one of my top 3 Batman graphic novels, I think it\’s cool that DC animated are doing these. There are rumours of the Dark Knight Returns also being adapted which would be incredible but might have to tone down the violence for a DVD release.
Personally I would love them to adapt Kingdom Come with Alex Ross involved in the animation somehow a sweaty geek can dream.
Very stoked for this.
Batman\’s pretty much the only super hero that\’s been done justice in animation and film. Good thing that he\’s one of the best