The Flash: First Look at Michael Keaton’s Batman Return

Batman returns! 30 years after Michael Keaton played the Dark Knight in Tim Burton’s Batman 1989 and 1992 sequel Batman Returns, Keaton dons the cape and cowl for the third time in The Flash. In the superhero crossover bringing Burton’s Bruce Wayne into the DC Extended Universe, where Ezra Miller’s speedster Barry Allen is a lightning-fast member of the Justice League, Keaton suits up for the multiverse movie also bringing back Ben Affleck’s SnyderVerse Batman. In a special sneak peek out of DC FanDome 2021, see the official first look at Keaton’s Batman return in director Andy Muschietti’s The Flash before it races into theaters on November 4, 2022.

Along with the young and fast-footed Flash, the fastest man alive in his or any universe, Keaton’s veteran Batman is a mentor figure for the Kryptonian Supergirl (Sasha Calle). Keaton reprises his role for the first time since 1992, with The Flash movie ignoring the events of 1995’s Batman Forever (starring Val Kilmer as the caped crusader) and 1997’s Batman & Robin (starring George Clooney as the costumed crime-fighter). 

“It was shockingly normal. It was weird,” Keaton said in a recent interview about returning to the world of DC Comics as a superhero after playing a Marvel villain in Spider-Man: Homecoming. “And like I went, ‘Oh! Oh yeah. That’s right.’ But also, then you start to play the scenes and a lot of memories, a lot of really interesting sense memories [come back].”

In another interview from over the summer, Keaton said it was “a little bit emotional” reprising his role decades after hanging up his yellow-emblemed Bat-suit. 

“Just a rush of memories,” Keaton said. “Without giving anything away, which I can’t, basically the first shot, not of the entire movie but let’s say the introduction [of Batman], is so good that when we walked on and started talking about a couple of shots and the angles, I went ‘whoa, this is big. This is great.’ I don’t even mean for me. Just the imagery, it’s great. And reminiscent, to some degree, of Tim Burton.”

Starring Ezra Miller, Ben Affleck, Sasha Calle, Kiersey Clemons, Maribel Verdú, Ron Livingston, and Michael Keaton, Warner Bros. and DC Films’ The Flash opens in theaters on November 4, 2022.