Batman Unburied Starring Winston Duke Beats Joe Rogan on Spotify Podcast Charts Worldwide

Given the massive reach of Joe Rogan’s podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, and the fact that so much of the industry is driven by subscriptions (which means success breeds success), it’s a rarity when anything knocks him out of the top spot on the charts. It happened this week, and maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. If there’s anything that’s routinely proven to be a crowd-please, it’s Batman. And that’s exactly what knocked Rogan off his usual perch: Batman Unburied, a new, scripted podcast starring Black Panther’s Winston Duke as the Dark Knight and Gina Rodriguez as Barbara Gordon.

From writer David Goyer, is the first project to emerge from the DC and Spotify partnership announced in 2020. Batman Unburied is billed as a psychological drama diving deep into the Dark Knight’s mind, which pairs nicely with The Batman, which just hit HBO Max after bringing in blockbuster numbers at the box office. In the above video, Goyer suggests that the producers will take full advantage of the audio format in bringing Batman’s shadowy world to life.

“I’ve been a fan of narrative podcasts for some time and was looking for the right story — returning to Batman seems like the perfect opportunity,” said Goyer in a press release announcing Batman Unburied. “We’ll be using the unique advantages of audio to dig into the more nightmarish members of the Dark Knight’s Rogues Gallery.”

The first two episodes of the ten-episode series debuted on May 3, exclusively on Spotify. According to Variety, who broke the news, the series captured the top spot on the charts in the United States, Australia, Brazil, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Mexico and India. In Japan, it sits at No. 2, behind Spotify Studios’ manga adaptation Spy x Family.

In addition to Duke and Rodriguez, the series’ cast includes Sam Witwer (The Mist, Supergirl) as the cannibalistic serial killer called The Harvester;  Emmy  Raver-Lampman (The Umbrella Academy, Central Park) as Kell, a medical student helping Bruce Wayne; Jessica Marie Garcia (On My Block, Diary of a Future President, How to Get Away with Murder) as Barbara Gordon’s partner Renee Montoya, Jim Pirri (Penguins of Madagascar) as Arnold Flass, a corrupt cop using his badge for personal gain.

Below, you can see the official synopsis for the series:

“When audiences meet Bruce Wayne he is a forensic pathologist, working in the bowels of Gotham Hospital and tasked with examining the victims of The Harvester, a gruesome serial killer preying on Gotham’s citizens. Not only will the superhero be forced to face his own mental demons, but he will also have to overcome them in order to save the citizens of Gotham as his alter-ego, Batman.”