An Interview With… Dylan Clark, Producer Of ‘The Batman’

‘The Batman’ releases in cinemas on 4th March and earlier this week I had the absolute pleasure of interviewing Dylan Clark, the Producer of ‘The Batman’, along with director Matt Reeves.

This was my first roundtable experience and I loved every moment of it. I was joined by fellow DC Comics fans and reporters and it was a joy to hear the passion that Dylan clearly has for this film. Here is the audio transcription of my interview with ‘The Batman’ Producer, Dylan Clark.

Me: Hi Dylan, my name is Tasmin, The Aspiring Kryptonian from the UK. This Batman really takes lurking in the shadows to the next level and in this film it’s sort of what makes him more intimidating to the people of Gotham. Practically how difficult was that to capture on camera?

Dylan Clark: Um, not difficult. I think a lot of care went into crafting shots with Greg Fraser. Matt (Reeves), Greg (Fraser) and also our production designer James Chinlund wanted to design a Gotham that was very moody, very scary and have this, you know, this vengeance, this character of the night come out and really intimidating ways. You know the best part I think about this year two Batman is that he’s not quite perfected being Batman, and so there’s a level of threat and brutality to him. That’s certainly from the comics, we haven’t quite seen this yet on film and Rob (Pattinson) just inhabited that intensity and that spirit of vengeance.

In terms of the villains, so obviously The Penguin and The Riddler are the main ones in this, what were the reasons behind the choice of those particular characters and what made you take them, specifically The Riddler, in a darker way than what we’ve seen before?

I think Matt (Reeves) was interested in putting a series of things in front of this Batman that would help him reveal who he was and what his family legacy was. He wanted Batman/Bruce Wayne to be challenged very specifically in a way where he could be a detective, but also a detective trying to figure out who he was and he just felt like a very timely bad guy. The Riddler just felt like somebody that would create puzzles with his cyphers and leave direct notes to Batman, you know kind of bringing him in. There’s that idea Matt (Reeves) was really excited about, which was the fact that The Riddler doesn’t become The Riddler until our vigilante puts on this cape and cowl for two years and shows what he can do, and he sees that and thinks they’re united. He believes there’s a partnership, and that responsibility that Batman has through the course of this movie and the truth that is revealed is the emotional journey that this character had to go on.

And in relation to Oz, he’s just that mid-level gangster who wasn’t quite the kingpin yet, who worked in a gangster world that is familiar to us. Again we tried to ground Gotham in the most specific real way, Gotham is a mirror, of course, to our cities, usually New York but around the world we feel a connection to it. We really wanted to present an authentic Gotham, so that it felt very contemporary to our audience today and Oz just was that great gangster-like character, that Bob Hoskins in ‘A Long Good Friday’ that Matt fell in love with. And then Colin (Farrell) of course did the thing that he wanted to, he went on this incredible prosthetic make-up journey to create this insanely good character.

In terms of producing the film, obviously there are loads of different aspects that go into it, how did you feel when you got to see it in its entirety for the first time?

I’m just a giant fan. I have a great job, I love what I do, I love my partnership with (Matt) Reeves he’s like a brother to me and I care about this stuff deeply. I’m a nerd and I love film, I grew up with movies, so there are moments along the way where Toby Emmerich, the Head Of Warner Brothers, said “can you believe that we four sitting here looking at Robert Pattinson and making the decision to make this movie?” And when I saw the movie, when I finally saw Matt’s directors cut, I just remembered that day and then what we had to go through to finish the movie. Even though it was really long, I loved it and it was exactly the script that Matt (Reeves) wrote.

I was moved, I just felt happy, I was excited for this moment where I could talk to people that finally have seen it, and for them to smile at me and tell me what they thought about it, I just can’t wait now to open it to the world in movie theatres. That’s the other thing, I’m so excited right now that people get to leave their homes to see this movie in theatres, because we made it for the big screen and I’m a little bit giddy with excitement.

I think we all are too! Thank you Dylan.

Once again a huge thank you to Warner Brothers UK for this incredible opportunity, I truly hope this isn’t the last!

‘The Batman’ is in cinemas on 4th March.