DC and Warner Bros. is offering up more good news after Matt Reeves officially signed on to direct The Batman. Chris McKay, who most recently directed the Lego Batman Movie for Warner Bros., is in negotiations to direct the Nightwing film, and Bill Dubuque (The Accountant) is writing the script.
Nightwing, aka Dick Grayson, is perhaps best known for being the original Robin. Grayson was the youngest member of a family of acrobats known as the “Flying Graysons.” He was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and illustrator Jerry Robinson, and first introduced in Detective Comics #38 in April 1940. After his parents were murdered, he was taken in as the legal ward of Bruce Wayne/Batman. He then became Robin and teamed up with Dark Knight on many an adventure to fight crime in the city of Gotham. Grayson famously shed his persona in the 1980s as the character aged up, and became the leader of the Teen Titans. (In the DC Universe, a succession of young men took on the mantle of Robin while Nightwing became a popular character in his own right, headlining his own comics and appearing in animated movies.)
The character of Robin has yet to officially appear in the new Warner Bros. movies, although his graffiti-covered suit was shown in Batman v. Superman, and director Zack Snyder has said that at that point in time Robin had been killed by the Joker (there have been multiple Robins over the years in the comics, and Snyder did not say which one was killed by the Joker in his film). It’s unclear where this new Nightwing story will fit in on the timeline.
McKay made his feature film directorial debut with the hit animated superhero comedy The Lego Batman Movie, which has earned $182.4 million to date after hitting theaters on Feb. 21. He previously worked on The LEGO Movie as an animation co-director, and has also directed three seasons of series Robot Chicken.
