‘Batgirl’ Filmmakers Say ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ Is The “Biggest Inspiration” & Tease Michael Keaton’s Involvement

Fresh off the massive success of “Bad Boys for Life,” filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah lined up a number of exciting projects, including two high-profile superhero gigs— “Ms. Marvel” and “Batgirl.” With “Ms. Marvel” hitting Disney+ this week, it’s time now to look ahead at the latter of those superhero projects, “Batgirl.”

Speaking on an upcoming episode of The Playlist Podcast, filmmakers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah took time to tease what fans can expect from the upcoming “Batgirl” film, which stars Leslie Grace as the title character. Namely, what version of the ‘Batman’ mythos inspired them the most, as well as how Michael Keaton factors into this whole situation. 

But first, the filmmakers talked about how “Ms. Marvel” and “Batgirl” might both be about young women as superheroes, but they are very different when it comes to the finished product.

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“Obviously one is a TV show [‘Ms. Marvel’] with multiple directors and you have a whole producing and screenwriting team, and the other is a movie [‘Batgirl’], so it’s more centered around the directors, you would say,” explained Adil El Arbi. “But you still have the origin stories of those two young women who all of the sudden need to go on a mission and are learning. The thing is that ‘Ms. Marvel’ is really [about a] teenager and is hopeful and colorful and really bright, while ‘Batgirl’ is DC, so it’s Gotham and it has that darker vibe. Obviously, the first superhero we saw was Michael Keaton in the Tim Burton Batman, so being able to work with him together with Leslie Grace, it was mind-blowing.”

He continued, “And you know, we tried to have that darker vibe of ‘The Animated Series’ that was really the biggest inspiration to us and it’s just a big honor and privilege to do these two projects and hopefully the fandom of both will see the homage that we do to them and will appreciate our humble contribution.”

You probably noticed the filmmaker teased the inclusion of Michael Keaton as Batman in “Batgirl.” Obviously, this leads to the big question about whether or not “Batgirl” ties directly in with Tim Burton’s version of the franchise? Or are there more multiversal shenanigans afoot?

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“Without telling too much, we can just say that we were inspired by all of the Gotham City’s portrayed onscreen,” teased the filmmaker. “All the directors have such interesting visual flairs and we tried, the same as ‘Ms. Marvel,’ to do a remix of all that. You know whether it’s Matt Reeves, Christopher Nolan, Tim Burton – obviously, because we’re big, big Tim Burton fans. Of all his movies, so it’s an homage of the other things. And even just the funky colors of Joel Schumacher. The visual flair that he brought – the neons, the dutch angles here and there. As fanboys ourselves, you know, it’s the biggest dream we could ever hope for…”

“Batgirl” was originally announced as an HBO Max exclusive film. However, since filming has ended, Warner Bros. Discovery is rumored to release the film in theaters first. We’re still awaiting an official release date. —Additional reporting from Mike DeAngelo