The Batman to Film in Chicago Next Month

09/23/2020 08:57 pm EDT

Out of DC's roster of blockbusters that are set to arrive in the coming years, The Batman has already piqued fans' interests in a lot of ways. The Matt Reeves-directed film debuted its first footage during last month's DC FanDome virtual convention, providing just a taste of what the overall film will entail. Now that production on The Batman has safely resumed, it sounds like the film will soon begin filming stateside. According to a new listing in Production Weekly, The Batman is scheduled to shoot in Chicago, Illinois in October of this year. Screen Magazine provides a bit more context for the shoot, reporting that the production is set to film for five days across two weekends -- October 16th-18th, and October 24th-25th. Their report alleges that filming will take place in downtown Chicago, and features "extensive driving sequences".

There's no indication of what the scale of the production will be, and whether the film's cast will be included in the shoot, or if it will primarily be stunt doubles and additional extras. DC movies have certainly had a precedent for filming in Chicago, or using the city in exterior footage for certain scenes. Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and Justice League all prominently utilize the city, and Suicide Squad used external shots of the city as well. And of course, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy made prominent use of Chicago and some of its surrounding areas. On the TV side, The CW's Batwoman has also filmed parts of its series in Chicago.

This will surely contribute to an interesting aesthetic for The Batman's take on Gotham City, especially since much of the production has filmed in the UK.

"It's just as important as any of the Rogues Gallery," Reeves said during an appearance at DC FanDome. "It's sort of like the nature of what this place is, and the history of it is critically important to our story and one of the things that I really wanted to do because it is the center of the story - especially the history of corruption in the city. [That] was I wanted to present it in a way that was really fleshed out, I wanted it to feel like an American city you'd never been to. I mean other iterations... the Burton one had very, very, theatrical, beautiful sets - and Nolan had the version that he created in Batman Begins and that was... parts of Chicago and parts of Pittsburgh. And what we're trying to do is create a version of it that you haven't seen before."

"So some of the locations that we've chosen... let's say there's like, we have like a Gotham Square, so that's like Times Square right now, if we shot it in Times Square then you'd be like I guess Gotham is New York," Reeves continued. "But in our case, it's actually going to be Liverpool. And the idea is to go to Liverpool, where there's all the sort of the foundation of the Gothic architecture, and then add all of the more modern structures in through CG... Now that I've floated off course I've told you what it is... so that aspect of Gotham and realizing it has been for me, one of the great pleasures in getting to make the movie."

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