In early 1999, Warner Bros. was angling for additional “Batman” content. While the feature film series had been brought to an end by the sour reaction to Joel Schumacher’s “Batman & Robin” in 1997, the Caped Crusader continued to thrive on television for several more years. Warner Bros. asked for a show from Bruce Timm’s team, but one that would, perhaps, be geared toward a younger audience than the relatively mature “Animated Series.” Timm, along with frequent producing collaborators/co-creators Paul Dini and Alan Burnett, hastily threw together a few ideas, eventually settling on what would become “Batman Beyond.”
Timm admitted it was a hasty decision. He said:
“In desperation, we came up with the concept for ‘Batman Beyond,’ which we thought was the only thing we could do that would reinvent the character without wrecking the continuity we had done. […] There was the opportunity to do more of a science-fictional Gotham City, and the more we talked about it the more we liked it.”
Despite the initial mandate to keep the show light, “Beyond” was just as grim as its predecessor. In the series, many of Batman’s old allies had retired or died, he had resigned from the Justice League, and characters like Batgirl and Nightwing stopped talking to him because they had a falling out. Old and alone and cloaked in resentment, Bruce Wayne had to train the hotshot Terry McGinnis to be the new Batman. It seemed that decades of crimefighting have done nothing to stem the constant rise of crime in the city, even after Gotham went cyberpunk.
“Batman Beyond” was massively successful, lasted for three seasons, and spawned a straight-to-video feature film, “Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker” in 2000. Even if it was a last-minute decision, it was a good one.
