Zack Snyder Unsure Ben Affleck Would Want to Return For Batman Prequel Series on HBO Max

Now that Zack Snyder’s Justice League is out on HBO Max, fans are considering ways to extend the reach of Zack Snyder‘s vision into new projects. While most would consider a sequel to be ideal, the current streaming landscape means prequels and spinoff series on HBO Max, like James Gunn’s Peacemaker series coming off of The Suicide Squad, are a possibility. In an interview with MTV News, Snyder discussed such ideas and thinks Martian Manhunter and Deathstroke are both exciting characters for such projects to follow. Perhaps a more obvious one is Batman, potentially creating a sequel that explores the Dark Knight’s 20 years working alongside Robin in Gotham City before Joker’s murder of the Boy Wonder.

“I think all those are great ideas. I think Martian Manhunter or Deathstroke are great ideas for this kind of prequel concept where you’re back with Batman and his young ward and their just doing what they did for 20 years in Gotham. That would be an interesting thing,” Snyder says. “I don’t know if Ben would want to do that. Because it’s such a vast canvas you can poke into it anywhere you want and find a kind of small story that would be interesting to tell, you know. I mean, Deathstroke’s origin is an amazing place to go and look.”

Such a series might cause brand confusion with the upcoming Gotham PD television series. That HBO Max show connects to The Batman, Matt Reeves’ forthcoming film starring Robert Pattinson as Batman early in his detective-vigilante career.

“Matt Reeves is obviously a producer on Gotham City PD,” said HBO head Casey Bloys while speaking to The Wrap in February. “We don’t want to reserve characters just for films or for TV. There should be kind of some fluidity between them. So that is the idea. I mean, we’re in very early stages on that. So I don’t want to suggest that any one character will be. But yes, that is, generally speaking, that is the idea, that there will be crossover.”

“The idea of the story was a story in which Gotham has that sort of depth of corruption, and then the idea that we could actually do a series that is going deeper into an aspect of it, which in this case is the corrupt police department and the inner workings of the city,” Reeves said of the series the DC FanDome event. “The idea is we go back to Year One, and Year One is the beginning of the emergence and is the first appearance of this masked vigilante that starts to unsettle the city, and you start to see the story through the point of view of these corrupt cops and one in particular, and the story is actually a battle for his soul.”

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max.