At New York Comic Con today, Warner Bros. Animation offered up a first look at its next DC Universe Original Movie (its 31st!), Batman: Gotham by Gaslight. Based on the popular Elseworlds comics tale by Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola, the film features a steampunk take on Batman as he pursues Jack the Ripper in turn-of-the-century Gotham City. This is Elseworlds 101 people!
The film, which is coming in early 2018, was executive-produced by DC animation legend Bruce Timm, directed and produced by Sam Liu (Teen Titans: The Judas Contract), and written by Jim Krieg (Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox), all of whom were in attendance to chat about the project and show off a few clips.
Timm explained that while the original comic was fairly short, they’ve expanded the story to include more characters from Batman’s universe, including Harvey Dent and Selina Kyle. He likened it to a Gilligan’s Island episode where Gilligan would get bonked on the head and the Professor was suddenly Sherlock Holmes, Mary Ann was suddenly Eliza Doolittle, and so on.
Another challenge to adapting the story was the fact that in the original comic, there was really only one suspect as to who was actually Jack the Ripper was. In the movie they’re able to have more red herrings. It will also feature more adult material than a typical DC animated film, and the producers even went so far as to advise the studio that there’s a chance that Gaslight could wind up with an R rating (it hasn’t been submitted to the ratings board yet).
“Knowing this was our first Batman story that was just as much a horror movie as it was a superhero tale, we knew that the Jack the Ripper story was tricky territory,” said Timm. “It’s as bloody as it needs to be. It’s tastefully done, I guess, but it’s the story of this guy who is a serial killer who’s murdering women in our version of Whitechapel. … There’s at least one sequence that makes you squirm. Maybe two.”
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Three clips were shown to the NYCC crowd to give us a sense of how the comic has been translated to animation form. The first involved the “Cock Robins,” a gang of Dickensian-esque street urchins named Dick, Jason and Tim who have been employed by a big lug of a criminal to rob innocent passersby. Batman arrives in his distinctly 19th century styled costume to take on this boss and kick his butt before telling the three Robins to go find “Sister Leslie,” who can hopefully lead them on the straight and narrow. (This nun is of course a riff on the Batman character Leslie Thompkins.)
The next clip involved Selina Kyle, who is not in a Catwoman costume here but does have a whip as she fights off a shadowy Jack the Ripper in a slaughterhouse. (Jennifer Carpenter (Dexter) voices Selina, while Young Justice and Batman: Under the Red Hood’s Bruce Greenwood returns to voice Batman once again.)
The team pulled from several sources of inspiration when creating this take on Selina. Aside from Catwoman herself, they also looked to the Sherlock Holmes character Irene Adler as well as a character from the old film Jack the Ripper film The Lodger. That movie featured a can-can dance, and so Timm and his fellow creators decided Selina needed to do a dance too.
The third clip featured a bloodied Batman fighting a masked Jack top of a zeppelin, culminating in his head about to get pushed into rotating blades… But to find out what happens, we have to wait for the finished movie next year.
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The decision to depict Batman’s cowl with open eye holes rather than the standard white lenses was discussed. Not only does it adhere closer to Mignola’s original design, but the team felt that it also makes him more human and relatable.
“That’s one of the things we keyed in on from the original comic,” said Timm. “Mike drew Batman as if he has an old aviator’s helmet on. … I thought it definitely gave him a different aspect. It had an interesting effect on us. I think it made us think of him as a little more human. Normally I think of Batman as his true self and Bruce Wayne the costume, but here [it’s different].”
Indeed, the art is not a direct adaptation of Mignola’s style, because it would’ve simply been too expensive to fully bring that shadowy approach to life. But the film definitely takes cues from Mignola. Those stark contrasts and shadows helped when keeping Jack the Ripper’s identity a secret as well. Some other changes were made to the story as well when translating it to film.
“It’s tricky because it’s Jack the Ripper but the entire thing is transposed into Gotham City,” said Timm. “In the original story the murders take place in London and then he travels across the ocean to Gotham. … There are certain nods to the historical Jack the Ripper. But none of the victims are the real victims. … We wanted to incorporate elements of London from that time into Gotham City, like the peas-soup fog. … It set the visual tone of the city. Everything is lit by that kind of horrible polluted fog.”
The group also noted that Penny Dreadful was very popular among the crew when they were designing Gotham By Gaslight, and so they got to scratch that itch.
Some other notes from the panel:
-Expect to see Hugo Strange in the film as the director of a “really, really horrible” version of Arkham Asylum.
-Timm said that the Superman story Red Son is “at the very top of our list if we get to make another” Elseworlds film. “In a weird way it’s sort of the opposite of this one in terms of scope and length. It would be a challenge to fit it into one movie.”
-There is a bat vehicle that is somewhat steampunk inspired.
-On downgrading Batman’s gadgets due to the time period: Krieg said, “He’s using his bat brain. There’s no bat computer. He has a bat abacus! He’s the world’s greatest detective. He’s like Sherlock Holmes. There’s certainly a nod to the gadgets, but the greatest gadget is under the cowl.”
-Timm: “We don’t get to show Batman using actual detection [too often]. So this was our chance to jump whole hog into that. … Certainly when he and Selina meet cute, they’re pulling the Sherlock Holmes [move] on each other. … Instant attraction because they’re both detective nerds.”
-Expect Easter eggs for Batman, Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper, and old movies.
-On whether the Batman vs. vampires story Red Rain will ever get made: “That’s one that has come up occasionally,” said Timm. “I really like the idea of Red Rain. Actually back in the days of Batman: The Animated Series we had an idea to do a vampire story, but at the time we were told no vampire stories. But that’s one we’d like to do.”
Look for Gotham By Gaslight in early 2018.
Talk to Senior Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura.
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