Posted in: Batman, Movies, Warner Bros | Tagged: Batman, batman: the long halloween, DCAU, film

Batman: The Long Halloween Writer Talks Modernizing the Story

It's now been a monumental 25 years since Jeph Loeb, and Tim Sale published the comic series Batman: The Long Halloween, and all these years later, it's still deemed popular enough to get retold as an animated film.

Batman: The Long Halloween has now been adapted as a two-part, DC Universe Animated Film event, with the first chapter being released on June 22 and the second soon to follow in August. The upcoming films are Written by Tim Sheridan and directed by Chris Palmer, depicting a younger Batman than the broodier-with-age Bruce Wayne we're familiar with.

Batman: The Long Halloween introduces a serial killer who commits murder on holidays – and maintains a very noir, crime-thriller edge to the beloved story. In a new interview over at Comic Book Resources, the film's screenwriter (Sheridan) opened up about the choice to modernize the retelling of the story.

Sheridan explains, "There were a lot of things inherent in the book that I wanted to flesh out and felt we needed to flesh out for it to work as a movie, but it wasn't hard. The great thing about a work of art is a lot of it is up to interpretation, so a lot of what you're getting in The Long Halloween is how Butch, Jim, and I interpret The Long Halloween. I wanted to make sure that we were making the women in the story as well-rounded and full as characters as the men in the story. I believe this is a story about Gotham City and what it does to families who serve Gotham City. Just as much as the men, the women are a huge part of that story."

In addition to their attention to detail on the women in the film, the writer notes, "Also how we look at mental illness in this story. I think times have changed, and so has the way we look at villains and motivations for things and the way we look at mental illness in general. There were opportunities here to look at the characters and be more thoughtful how we approach those things than we may have been if we did the movie in the '90s; what better time than now?"

Batman: The Long Halloween (Part One) is available now, so make sure to check it out!

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