Director Matt Reeves announced that principal photography on 'The Batman Part II' began in London on Friday, June 12, 2026, posting a first-day photograph of the production slate to social media at 1:34 p.m. ET. TheWrap reported the post — a single image of the marked clapperboard, cinematographer Eigil Bryld credited in the caption (as @E_Messerschmidt), and a three-word sign-off that has now become the most quoted line in the comic-book film world for the week: "Here we go…"
Robert Pattinson returns as Bruce Wayne for the sequel, four years after the original film's $772 million global gross repositioned him from indie-leaning lead to franchise center of gravity. The cast Reeves has assembled around him reads as a deliberate widening rather than a routine sequel — Colin Farrell reprises The Penguin from the original film and the HBO spinoff, and Sebastian Stan, Scarlett Johansson, Charles Dance, Sebastian Koch, and Bryan Tyree Henry join in roles that Warner Bros. has not yet detailed publicly.
The four-year gap between the 2022 original and the start of this shoot is the longest a Batman feature has waited between sequels since the Schumacher-era transitions of the 1990s. The pause traced to multiple intersecting variables — the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes ate the originally planned spring 2024 shoot, the Warner Bros. Discovery DC restructure under James Gunn and Peter Safran scoped the Elseworlds branding around Reeves' continuity, and Reeves and co-writer Mattson Tomlin rewrote the script three times to align with the studio's revised release strategy. The October 1, 2027 theatrical date is the third one this project has been assigned.
Pattinson's stretch since the 2022 release has bridged commercial work with a continued indie register. He shot Bong Joon-ho's Mickey 17, the Adam Sandler-led Spaceman, and Claire Denis's High Life follow-up; he also became a father with partner Suki Waterhouse, whose
recent comments about expanding their family
landed in a register that read as a deliberate decompression from the franchise's gravitational pull. Returning to the Bat-suit four years on is the test of whether that off-cycle catalog will read as enriching the franchise performance or as the work the franchise interrupted.
Reeves' production design playbook is the other variable to watch. The 2022 film's London-and-Liverpool shoot leaned hard into rain-slick noir and analog effects work, and the slate photograph Reeves released on Friday shows the same Warner Bros. Leavesden Studios stage where the original was anchored. The continuity choice is itself a statement — sequels that change their physical production base typically signal a tonal pivot the studio is steering, and the Leavesden hold reads as Reeves keeping the visual register the original earned.
The cast additions are the more material reveal. Scarlett Johansson's casting is the largest-scale female lead the Reeves continuity has yet recruited, and the role's identity has been the subject of two months of fan speculation centered on a Catwoman recast (which Reeves has publicly declined to confirm or deny) versus an original character. Sebastian Stan's casting, similarly unspecified, has been read against a Hush-arc framing that the original film's ending set up; Charles Dance and Sebastian Koch's veteran European-cinema profiles suggest gallery-level antagonists.
What lands between now and the October 2027 release is the longest single production window the Reeves project has run on. A planned twelve-month shoot, an additional twelve months of post and visual effects, and a marketing rollout that will likely begin at CinemaCon 2027 sets up a calendar in which the next material public beat is the first official still or teaser, which Warner Bros.' tracking history suggests will land in early to mid-2027 rather than later in 2026.
