'Batman: Caped Crusader' Officially Saved By Amazon

At least that's one project saved from HBO Max's cuts

It turns out, when you’re a big enough superhero, someone will be there to save you. Batman: Caped Crusader has been picked up by Amazon, though the formal deals have yet to close.

Batman: Caped Crusader was one in a crop of six projects originally in development at HBO Max and Cartoon Network dropped in August 2022 by the Warner Bros. Discovery regime as a “cost-cutting measure”, believing they could make more money and monetize content by selling projects to third-party buyers. The five other projects that HBO Max halted progress on but are still being shopped are Merry Little Batman, The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical, Did I Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story, and The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie. Originally announced in May 2021, competing platforms like Netflix and Apple (in addition to Amazon) were already in pursuit of Caped Crusader before a month had even passed. Though the behavior of dropping developing animated shows hasn’t ceased, as Scooby-Doo! and the Mystery Pups, announced this past May, met similar limboistic fate last week, but was forced to wrap production early. Not only did Amazon pick up Caped Crusader, but also ordered a second season. Soon after the original May 2021 announcement, HBO Max and Cartoon Network had announced a two-season order of My Adventures with Superman, the first Superman solo animated series since the DC Animated Universe series ended in 2000, and the two were likely paired together, but will now be on separate platforms, as the latter was not one of the affected shows.

The series, from executive producers Bruce Timm, J.J. Abrams, and The Batman director Matt Reeves, brought Timm to his first Batman series since the days of Batman: The Animated Series. It was touted as following in that series’s footsteps while taking the character back to its roots. Comic book writer Ed Brubaker is among the creative team and ran a writers room and is Timm’s second-in-command on the 10-episode first season. In late November, it was reported that Warner Bros Television signed an animation deal with Amazon for DC-branded content, seemingly to bolster this sort of move. How much new DC content will go through and join Caped Crusader is unknown, but as far as library, the 2003 Teen Titans series and Justice League Action were added at the start of the year.

Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, TVLine