Though the studio has only just properly locked in a director to make The Batman, Warner Bros. has plans to extend its DC movies line by adapting another member of the Bat-family. The Lego Batman Movie's Chris McKay is now lining up his live-action debut with Nightwing.
The hero will be familiar to Bat-fans as Dick Grayson, the original Robin, introduced back in 1940. The youngest member of a family of acrobats, he became the legal ward of Bruce Wayne and assumed the Robin identity to fight crime alongside Batman. In the 1980s, as he aged, he left Batman's side, took on the Nightwing identity and led the Teen Titans.
While Robin has yet to officially appear in the live-action DC Universe (Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises only nodded to the name, and in Batman V Superman, we're shown that a Robin – not necessarily Grayson – was murdered by The Joker), he has of course appeared in McKay's Lego Batman Movie as a whimsical, overenthusiastic sidekick. Using Nightwing could be a way to avoid the usual cheese of Robin while still introducing more humour into the universe.
The Accountant's Bill Dubuque is writing the script, and while McKay has yet to prove himself in the live-action arena, his animated take on Batman proved to be one of the most entertaining versions of the character for years.