If you’re into superhero movies and active on social media, chances are you may have stumbled upon a thing called BatmanGate – a legal matter that came to an end this week, at least for now. It was a fairly ludicrous case, not least because the only people who believed/supported the plaintiff were members of Comicsgate (an alt-right movement that opposes progressive messages in comic books) and the more extreme supporters of Zack Snyder, who were more than happy to have another excuse to baselessly attack their imagined enemies, in this case Matt Reeves.
Here's what happened: in March 2022, the film The Batman, directed and co-written by Reeves, was released in cinemas. It was generally well received and also a commercial success, spawning at least one spin-off (The Penguin, a streaming miniseries scheduled to premiere later this year) as well as a direct sequel currently planned for 2026 (the original 2025 release date was a casualty of last year’s Writers Guild of America strike).
A few months after the movie’s theatrical run, a man named Chris Wozniak – a comic book artist who worked for Marvel and DC in the ‘90s – claimed the script had ripped off something he had written and submitted to DC in 1990. Coining the hashtag BatmanGate, he went as far as suing the publisher, and its parent company Warner Bros., for copyright infringement. Naturally, they countersued him for making a copyright request for material featuring characters and elements that are their property.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Talking Pictures to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.