"The Batman" is still out there, almost ready to emerge from his Batcave.

Ben Affleck was originally going to direct, star, and co-write "The Batman," but now Matt Reeves has the directing job. He's had the job for a while, but he just offered some updates during the TCAs, where Reeves was promoting his Fox show "The Passage."

Reeves said (via /FILM) he was working on getting a script draft submitted in the next couple of weeks, with the hope to start filming this coming "spring or early summer, something like that."

Reeves shot down any rumors of doing "Year One," or any particular comic:

"We are definitely not doing Year One. It’s just exciting to be focused very specifically on a tale that is defining for him and very personal to him. Obviously we’re not doing an origin tale or anything like that. We’re doing a story that is definitively Batman, though, and trying to tell a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman."

Reeves emphasized that his film will be "a very point of view noir-driven definitive Batman story in which he is investigating a particular case and that takes us out into the world of Gotham." In case you were delusional, he added, "There’s no continuation of the [Christopher] Nolan films. It’s very much trying to find a way to do this as something that for me is going to be definitively Batman and new and cool."

There have been rumors that Ben Affleck won't be returning as Batman. The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline both had reports in June about DC rebooting this story to focus on a young Caped Crusader. There was talk that "The Batman" might be a standalone with no connection to the DCEU.

However, Affleck had said he was looking for a "graceful and cool way to segue out" of playing Batman, to hand it off to the next actor. That may be why Reeves seemed to leave the door open Affleck to be involved:

"There are ways in which all of this connects to DC, to the DC universe as well. We’re one piece of many pieces so I don’t want to comment on that except to say that I’m focused very specifically on this aspect of the DC world."

According to Deadline, Reeves added that Ben Affleck "is still involved" in the project, but it was too early to say more.

It's possible, as /FILM speculated, that Ben Affleck could be involved in a bookend storyline, showing up at the beginning and the end of a feature more focused on a different Bruce Wayne.

But there are still a lot of question marks, and you can never be too sure what's going to happen in the DC world until cameras start rolling. But as of now Reeves still plans to shoot the film in the first half of 2019. Best of luck with that.

Meanwhile, Ben Affleck is preparing to direct his buddy Matt Damon in that high-profile McDonald's scam movie.

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