Cape Watch: A Glimpse at Who Batman Will Battle in His Solo Movie

Now that the summer blockbuster season is over, this week felt as if the superhero film industry—or the bigwigs at DC, Marvel, and Fox, at least—let out a deep sigh of relief and started thinking about the future. Meanwhile, Suicide Squad looks like it could cross the $700 million mark before it leaves theaters, proving… well, that depends on how you feel about the Rorschach movie of the year, really. While you're working that out, here are the highlights of the week's superhero movie news.

Ben Affleck knew that he would drive the Internet wild when he shared this earlier in the week:

For those unfamiliar with the lumbering figure in the test footage, that's Deathstroke, the unstoppable mercenary who got his origin in the New Teen Titans comic of the 1980s before going on to face Green Arrow and the whole Justice League. (Random trivia: Deadpool started out as a Deathstroke parody of sorts.) Fans initially believed this meant that the anti-hero was going to show up in next year's Justice League, but then it was reported that, no, he'd be the main villain in the Affleck-directed standalone Batman movie. Bad news for those who'd been hoping for a Batman/Joker battle, if true.
Why this is super: While Deathstroke isn't traditionally a Batman villain in the comic books, there's some thematic consistency in pitting the two against each other: the world's greatest detective having to hunt down the world's greatest mercenary? Now there is a high concept, never mind the superhero costumes.

Sure, he's fast, but how much will speed help DC's Flash when he has to deal with more than one bad guy? Heroic Hollywood reports that The Flash movie will give Ezra Miller's Fastest Man Alive a whole supervillain group to juggle, with the Rogues (a band of bad guys with different gimmicks who like to work together) being the source of trouble in the movie. Of course, that doesn't mean that all of the Rogues will show up, as Mashable's Jeff Sneider tweeted:

It's likely fans won't only see Cold and the Golden Glider (Cold's sister, for those who aren't up on their Flash facts) in the movie, though. Also, surely there will be at least a Captain Boomerang cameo, if not full-on appearances by Mirror Master, Heat Wave, and Weather Wizard too, right?
Why this is super: Given the success of Captain Cold on the CW's Flash TV show, it only makes sense to use him as the movie's villain. The only question is, can anyone really live up to Wentworth Miller's line delivery?

Now that we finally know who Marvel's Captain Marvel is, the speculative engine powering the 2019 project has entered the director stage, with the Hollywood Reporter saying that the studio has narrowed the field to just three people: *Whale Rider'*s Niki Caro, *Seeking a Friend at the End of the World'*s Lorene Scafaria, and TV director Lesli Linka Glatter, who's helmed episodes of Homeland, The Newsroom, and Mad Men. Jeff Sneider added a fourth candidate on Twitter: Rebecca Thomas, who directed 2012's Electrick Children. All four follow Marvel's tendency to go for relatively obscure choices who are inexpensive but bring a lot of ambition to the table. Now we just need one director to come out on top.
Why this is super: While it's likely that none of the names mentioned are known by the majority of people who'll want to watch Captain Marvel, it's good to see Marvel committed not only to putting new talent on big movies, but also to finding a female director to helm this film.

It was just a few weeks ago Marvel announced that it is teaming up with Hulu to develop a series based on Runaways, but now there's already word that things are moving forward in a big way. According to a report on That Hashtag Show, November's Doctor Strange may have cameos from not only Brother Voodoo—another Marvel magic-powered superhero who is thankfully less embarrassing than his name suggests—but also Tina Minoru... the mother of one of the Runaways, and an important character in that particular mythology for reasons that, to explain, might ruin the gimmick of the series.
Why this is super: Well, everything is supposed to be connected in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but who really expected a Runaways tie-in so quickly? Let's just hope that nothing bad happens to Tina before she gets to Hulu.

The long-awaited New Mutants movie at Fox has some forward momentum, with news coming this week that Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have signed on to work on a new screenplay for the project. They join the project after previously working with New Mutants director Josh Boone on The Fault in Our Stars. If that pedigree makes New Mutants sound like a deviation from other recent X-Men flicks, don't worry. X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse screenwriter Simon Kinberg is overseeing the entire project, so it's likely New Mutants won't be too from the other movies we've been getting from the Xavier estate recently.
Why this is super: Fox certainly seems committed to going the YA route for New Mutants, which could be a stroke of genius on its part, considering the demographic of the characters, never mind the target audience. Material like The Hunger Games and even Divergent and The Maze Runner have shown the potential for a true YA superhero property—could this be the next big thing waiting to happen?