DC Studios, Warner Bros. Unveil Absolute Batman Series
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation announced at Annecy International Film Festival that Scott Snyder and Nick Dragotta's "Absolute Batman" comic — launched in 2024, with 6 million-plus copies sold and a first volume on its 11th print run — is being adapted as an animated series, with Snyder as executive producer/showrunner and Dragotta as producer.
- "Joker: Laugh Riot", an adult animation series exec produced by Jim Krieg and directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, was greenlit with a logline in which Joker launches a crusade through Gotham's underworld to find Batman's killer — "pushed closer towards vigilante than villain" and "forced to confront the truth that without Batman, he doesn't know who he is."
- An untitled Krypto kids project, exec produced by C.H. Greenblatt, was placed in development, with the superdog tagging along with "a gang of misfit criminal wannabes" and slowly redeeming them through pure nature.
- Peter Safran made his first Annecy appearance on stage with Warner Bros. Animation President Sam Register, with James Gunn sending regrets from Atlanta where he's shooting "Man of Tomorrow"; Safran called animation "extraordinarily important" to the DCU and said the first DCU project under his and Gunn's stewardship was 2024's animated "Creature Commandos."
- Creature Commandos Season 2 details from WBA EVP Peter Girardi: G.I. Robot has been revamped, while King Shark, zombie-mummy Khalis, and female vampire Nosferata — teased at the end of Season 1 — will have significant roles next season.
- Safran highlighted the DCU's cross-medium character pipeline, citing Frank Grillo's Rick Flag appearing in Creature Commandos, Peacemaker, Superman, and the upcoming Man of Tomorrow: "we thought it was really fun to have the same actor playing the same character in every medium, no matter what."
Why it matters: DC is formalizing animation as the DCU's launch medium and character-introduction pipeline: Creature Commandos was the franchise's first project, and Safran explicitly endorsed introducing characters in animation and transitioning them to live action. The Absolute Batman adaptation gives one of DC's fastest-selling recent comics — 6 million copies, 11th print run since 2024 — a direct path to screen, while the same-day Joker: Laugh Riot greenlit expands the animated slate's tonal range to adult-skewing fare.
