Theatergoers will have to wait a little longer until Robert Pattinson’s Batman returns to the big screen. Matt Reeves’ successor in 2022 The Batman has gone back one year from its release date of October 2, 2026 to October 1, 2027.

Warner Bros. greenlit the untitled sequel in 2022, with Reeves set to direct and co-write the screenplay with Uncredited The Batman Screenwriter Mattson Tomlin, filming is scheduled to begin in mid-2025. Most of the main cast, including Pattinson, Geoffrey Wright, Andy Serkis and Colin Farrell, have already been confirmed to return.

Reeves and Tomlin are, of course, keeping the sequel’s script a secret, but the director dropped some hints while speaking to Digital Spy this week. Although Paul Dano’s Riddler is now imprisoned in Arkham, Gotham is slow to recover from the catastrophic flooding he caused by destroying the city’s seawall. And according to Reeves, that made things pretty complicated for Batman.

“In the first film, Batman looks at things in a very simplified way, he sees things in black and white. What he can represent and how he can influence that,” Reeves told Digital Spy. “When we start the next film, there’s a lot more gray. There are many more people who disagree. There is much more division in the city. It’s a lot more like our world today, there’s a lot of turmoil because people are in their camps and not communicating.”

Reeves added: “And when things are gray it’s very hard to be Batman, so that’s part of the challenge as we face it.”