Director Chris McKay Talks About DC's NIGHTWING Movie and Shared New Details

A few years ago Warner Bros. announced that DC Entertainment was developing a Nightwing movie and The LEGO Batman Movie director Chris McKay was brought on to write and direct it. The state of the project is in limbo right now, but in a recent interview with The Bear Cave, McKay opened up about the project and offered some details on his approach to the story and Batman’s involvement.

He explained that the film “becomes a revenge movie and it’d be an introduction to Nightwing and the world of Blüdhaven. There was going to be a lot of villains."

The story would have also explored Dick Grayson’s relationship with his mentor, Bruce Wayne, saying, “It was going to be a real, it was going to be a character study about this guy who grew up with sort of a bad dad. How that made him as a young adult try to fight off and go as far away from that world as humanly possible and get dragged back into it.”

Some of the details of the story evolved and changed along the way to fit in with what was being done with the other DCEU films. McKay went on to say, “There was still some stuff that was needed to be determined of what that was going to look like.”

He then added that Ben Affleck’s Batman might have made an appearance but he did not loom large over the story. "It was like you were picking up a Nightwing comic. You’re not guaranteed Batman was going to show up, but he could show up and other people could show up, but again you’re dealing with Nightwing and that’s what I like about it. I like the idea of we don’t necessarily connect to certain things, we can just have it be a story that takes place in Blüdhaven or with Dick Grayson and his world. How he became Nightwing and why he became Nightwing there was a lot of stuff I liked about the approach.”

While the film is in limbo, it has not been canceled, McKay is still hoping he gets to make the movie, saying, “The reason why I’m hesitating because right now today, no one has told me we’re not making that movie. It’s just right now; they have other priorities. That’s the point of view Warner Bros are coming from and obviously a lot of things, a lot of their plans have had to change and change again. They’ve gone through a lot of stuff, and when I was brought in to Nightwing, they were in the process of doing Matt Reeves’ The Batman, so he was starting his thing there.”

He went on to say, “So to me, I still hold out a lot of hope I’m still going to make that movie. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but certainly, no one has said 'hey kid, you’re not making that movie.' In fact, if anything they’ve said 'today we’re not prioritizing that movie,' but they still want to make a Nightwing movie something I think is still important to them.”

The filmmaker went on to say that the movie wasn’t going to be a big-budget film as the budget was going to be under $100 million.

I hope McKay does end up getting to make his Nightwing movie. I think he would give the fans something really cool!