Warner Bros. Animation, DC, and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment have announced that a multi-part animated adaptation of the iconic Batman '90s comic book storyline that introduced arguably the Caped Crusader's most physically-imposing villain, Knightfall, is in development.
Directed by Jeff Wamester and written by Jeremy Adams, the first part - Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall - is currently in production and is slated to release at some point next year. Three more movies will follow.
The Knightfall comic book saga consisted of three parts — Knightfall, Knightquest, and KnightsEnd — and saw the Dark Knight meet his match in the form of the super-strong villain known as Bane, who managed to "break the Bat." With Bruce Wayne out of action, the far more violent and unstable Azrael took up the mantle of Batman.
This marks the first time Knightfall will be adapted in full, although Christopher Nolan did use elements of the story for The Dark Knight Rises, with Tom Hardy's Bane breaking Batman's (Christian Bale) back after their one-sided brawl.
Bane creator Chuck Dixon had the following to say about the debuting villain in a 2012 interview.
"Knightfall was in the planning for a few months and we were all working on the issues leading up to it. We all understood that we wanted to create a brand new villain to break Batman’s back but nothing had been discussed about him. Denny thought we should come out the other end of the stunt with a new bad guy. A lot of the elements of the event had been worked out around the creation of this new character but no ideas had been put forward by anyone about who this new badass would be. We were treating him as a blank that needed to be filled in."
"We knew we would basically be replacing KGBeast in the role of the brutal- but-intelligent bad guy. KGBeast had become old news with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The KG-Beast used to be. We also knew that he would be powered by Venom, the addictive super-steroid that Denny had come up with for an arc in Legends of the Dark Knight. And Denny promoted the idea of creating new villains with each event in the hopes of lightning striking. I liked this idea because I always thought DC’s villain bench was weak unlike Marvel where there are hundreds of great bad guys to choose from. I think that’s still true today especially with DC’s penchant for knocking off characters left and right."
You can check out the first official title art below.
The official plot synopsis for Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall reads: “When the mysterious behemoth known only as Bane frees Batman’s entire Rogue’s Gallery from Arkham Asylum, the Caped Crusader is pushed to his mental and physical breaking point.”
The voice cast has not been announced. Rick Morales serves as Supervising Producer alongside Producers Jim Krieg and Kimberly S. Moreau. Sam Register and Michael Uslan are Executive Producers.