The Batman Director Matt Reeves Says Warner Bros. Wanted PG-13 Rating

Following confirming there’s no R-rated Reeves Cut of The Batman, director Matt Reeves reveals studio Warner Bros. had 1 request: preserve Batman PG-13. Officially rated PG-13 for “solid violent and disturbing content material, drug written content, powerful language, and some suggestive material,” The Batman puts the Dim Knight detective (Robert Pattinson) on the path of sadistic serial killer The Riddler (Paul Dano). Explained by Warners as an “edgy, motion-packed thriller,” Reeves states in a new interview he wanted The Batman to “thrust the boundaries of what you could do in a PG-13 film.”

Talking to Collider, Reeves stated Warner Bros. was “amazingly supportive” and “cherished, from the inception,” the pitch about a rebooted Batverse with a more youthful caped crusader. 

“Once I wished to set it into this planet and that I wished to do a detective story noir and that whole point, they were incredibly responsive. They were being pretty psyched about that,” Reeves stated. “I reported from the starting, to do a standalone Batman film, you definitely have to [do something different]. You can find a very long line of terrific flicks. And so, the notion that you can occur and just do a further Batman film, it has to be a terrific Batman movie. You have to set out to do something that feels distinctive and different and definitive.”

He continued, “They embraced it the total time. There was in no way a second the place they said to me, ‘Are you positive? Let us not.’ They truly leaned into everything, and I have experienced the assistance to do actual … I necessarily mean, I have to say, this motion picture is accurately the motion picture I preferred it to be, and they have supported me all the way by way of it.” 

While Warners permitted R-rated Batman spinoff Joker and DCEU entries Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, as perfectly as R-rated director’s cuts of Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman and Justice League, the studio wished a extra audience-pleasant — and box place of work-helpful — score for its first standalone Batman movie considering that 2012’s The Dim Knight Rises. 

“A single thing they did do, which was my intention from the starting, was they explained, ‘Look, it really is important to us that the movie be PG-13. We want to make sure that we can get this … It is really a Batman movie, and we are investing so considerably in it,'” Reeves explained. “And I was like, ‘Well, in the [Planet of the] Apes movies, I attempted to kind of locate that equilibrium as effectively.’ They had been intended to be form of … They have been obviously spectacle and grand leisure, but there was a amount of depth.”

With The Batman, Reeves added, “I felt like in that exact way, I realized that we could push the boundaries of what you could do in a PG-13 motion picture and still produce all the things I desired to do.”

Starring Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/the Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as GCPD’s James Gordon, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard as Gotham D.A. Gil Colson, Jayme Lawson as mayoral applicant Bella Reál, Andy Serkis as Alfred, and Colin Farrell as Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot, The Batman opens exclusively in theaters on March 4.