Batman will rise from the shadows soon.
There are many Batman movies and spinoffs in development at the moment. In terms of live-action Batman films, three projects have emerged. Robert Pattinson’s The Batman – Part II will start filming shortly, finally continuing the story of director Matt Reeves’ 2022 box office hit. Batman’s The Brave and the Bold movie will reboot the character for James Gunn’s DC Universe, and Clayface focuses on a Batman villain.
Among DC’s upcoming projects focused on Gotham City are also a couple of animated releases. One of them is Dynamic Duo, which will star two of Batman’s Robins, Dick Grayson, who goes on to become Nightwing, and Jason Todd, who dies and is resurrected as Red Hood in the comics. While Dynamic Duo is a 2028 release, another animated Batman movie releases this year.
<em>Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall</em> will be officially screened at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, which takes place this June. DC’s new Batman movie does not have a set release date for the general audience at the time of writing, but the film’s screening will happen for attendees of the event sometime between June 21 and June 27.
Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall was announced on October 10, 2025, at the Warner Bros. Animation panel at New York Comic-Con 2025. The animated DC movie is set to be the first of a 4-part franchise that adapts one of the Dark Knight’s most iconic stories from DC Comics. While Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises used Knightfall elements, the 2026 movie will be more faithful to the source material.
Keeping in line with that, the official Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall synopsis spotlights Bane’s role as the Batman movie’s main villain. The character will free “Batman’s entire Rogue’s Gallery from Arkham Asylum“, which in turn leads to the Dark Knight being “pushed to his mental and physical breaking point“. Based on that description, DC fans can expect an intense Batman movie.
Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall is directed by Jeff Wamester and written by Jeremy Adams. Both of those names should ring a bell for fans of the franchise. After all, Wamester directed multiple animated DC movies in the Tomorrowverse franchise, such as the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths trilogy. As for Adams, he is a prolific DC Comics writer, penning the main The Flash and Green Lantern books.
Adams also wrote the DC animated movies Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons and Batman: Soul of the Dragon. According to Annecy, Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall‘s runtime is 1 hour and 18 minutes. At the time of writing, there have been no updates on the releases of the animated franchise’s next three Batman movies after Part 1.
