Prime Video, Adorned With 'Merry Little' Batman Smells, Sets Premiere Date
HBO Max lost this wheel when the Zaslav got his way!
What a day for rescued media then, eh? DC and Amazon Prime Video have announced a premiere date for Merry Little Batman, the Christmas Batman film they picked up back in April. It will premiere December 8 in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide.
The film is described as an animated family action comedy. According to the official synopsis, Bruce’s son Damian Wayne is left alone in Wayne Manor on Christmas Eve, and transforms himself into “Little Batman” to protect his home and all of Gotham City from supervillains trying to ruin the holiday. Yonas Kibreab, the voice of Elio in Pixar’s upcoming Elio, is the voice of Damian, an easy guess as the youngest-announced castmember. Since Luke Wilson was listed next, he’s probably Bruce/Batman while James Cromwell would probably be Alfred. David Hornsby is listed last but has all sorts of possibilities but the cast of characters beyond the three hasn’t been revealed. It is directed by Mike Roth, who has an extensive history writing at Cartoon Network dating back to Camp Lazlo but most prominently many episodes of Regular Show. The screenplay is by Morgan Evans, a producer on Earth to Ned, and Jase Ricci, a staff writer on the first season of Nickelodeon’s first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Roth also serves as executive producer alongside studio head Sam Register.
Merry Little Batman was one of six HBO Max projects also intended for Cartoon Network removed from the development slate in August 2022 by Warner Bros. Discovery as a “cost-cutting measure”, believing they could make more money and monetize content by selling projects to third-party buyers. The first to be successfully shopped was a Batman cartoon from executive producers Bruce Timm, J.J. Abrams, and The Batman director Matt Reeves said to be a spiritual successor to Batman: The Animated Series, called Batman: Caped Crusader. That was picked up by Amazon mere weeks before Merry Little Batman, with the streamer taking on both originally-ordered seasons. It seems this film has beaten it to release, though being a seasonally-appropriate Christmas movie it wasn’t like this was going to be released out-of-season or pushed a whole year.
The project was originally announced in September 2021, with two of the projects it would later be dropped with: Did I Do That To The Holidays: A Steve Urkel Story and The Day The Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, since renamed as Looney Tunes: Bubble Brains. Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical and The Amazing World of Gumball: The Movie were the other two. The non-Batman projects have not found homes yet. When Amazon picked up Merry Little Batman, it also picked up a spinoff series that is supposed to sequentially follow it, Bat-Family. It was not referenced in the release but should still be assumed to be connected.
Source: DC