Batman Beyond 2

An untitled Batman Beyond movie was a planned sequel to Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. However, the movie was never produced. Some ideas from and plot points from this unproduced movie were later used for the Justice League Unlimited episode Epilogue.

## Background

Bruce Timm talked about this unproduced Batman Beyond movie in an interview:

*"I could easily go back and do some more Batman Beyonds, sure.  There was this one DTV story idea that Glen Murakami and I were toying with involving Catwoman, but it was really dark…I mean pitch black.  So, after what happened with Return of the Joker, I don’t think that one’s gonna happen any time soon."*
*"The Catwoman Batman Beyond DTV thing was never scripted; it never went beyond a 45-minute impromptu plotting session between Glen Murakami and myself.  Nothing was ever even written down on it.  In its original (if nebulous) form, it was too similar to both Mask of the Phantasm and Return of the Joker in several key plot-structure points, but even before we had a chance to iron any of that out, the home video’s unbridled apathy towards any more Batman Beyond DTV projects made the whole thing moot."*
*"[However], as we were plotting out the tail end of the current JLU season, I brought the basic idea up to my co-producers, [and] we quickly realized how it could make a really nifty off-the-wall ‘bonus’ episode.  […] We did have Buffy’s ‘Restless’ episode in mind, season finale-wise; also, the ‘flashback’ structure was very much inspired by Tim Minnear’s excellent Firefly episode ‘Out of Gas,’ as well as the ‘Three Cathedrals’ episode of West Wing.  It actually works way better as the coda to this season than as a stand-alone Batman Beyond film; in fact, we were able to solve a lot of its inherent problems by grafting it onto the Cadmus plot."*
*"[In the Batman Beyond DTV], instead of Waller, Selina Kyle herself was going to be the one who cloned Batman.  Staying much closer to the ‘Boys from Brazil’ set-up, Selina hedged her bets and created lots of Bruce Wayne clones, and systematically murdered their parents when they reached the proper age.  Most of them didn’t become manic-depressive crime-fighters, only Terry and one other—a young boy she adopted and raised as her own son.  There was going to be a creepy ‘Manchurian Candidate’ aspect to their relationship, with the aging (but still disturbingly kinda sexy) Selina coaxing the kid into becoming an über-messed-up avenger of evil."*
*"Selina’s ‘son’ was going to be the main bad guy ‘muscle’ of the story—a twisted version of Terry / Bruce, with his own ‘dark superhero’ outfit and everything.  The plan was for him to be bumping off criminals from the Batman Beyond Rogues Gallery, and possibly even an old-timer like Edward Nygma, thus setting the plot in motion (this part was always a bit too ‘Phantasm’ for me, but I did like the ‘Manchurian Candidate’-ness of him)."*
*"This version of Selina had, at some point in the past, ‘seen the light,’ after years of Batman nagging her to use her talents to help people instead of just helping herself.  She eventually realized he was right, but with ‘born again’ zeal, decided Batman himself didn’t go far enough in punishing criminals; she needed a Batman who would help her eliminate criminals (i.e. kill them dead) and set about creating one.  These were going to be ‘true’ Bruce Wayne clones, not nano-engineered ‘sons’; in fact, that had a whole lot of problems built into it, which we would have had to figure out if we’d ever gotten a greenlight:*
*If Terry were an exact clone of Bruce, why didn’t Bruce recognize him immediately when he showed up fighting Jokerz outside his gate?*
*Since Lil’ Matt is patently identical to Terry, how could he also be a clone?  Wouldn’t make sense for Selina to have artificially inseminated Mary McGinnis twice, five or so years apart.*
*How did Terry’s parents escape being murdered when Terry was eight years old?*
*"Dwayne's 'nano-engineered sperm' idea neatly solved all these problems.  [In addition], there were other aspects of the story that would’ve needed some massaging; for instance, Selina never seemed particularly tech-savvy, so the bonkers clone plot seemed like a bit of a stretch for her (but perfect for Mrs. Waller and her Frankenstein leanings).  [Also], Bruce was going to discover the truth about ‘dark avenger guy’ being a clone of himself, put two and two together, and realize [that] Terry was also a Bruce clone and try to shut Terry out of the case, but that bit was way too similar to what we’d just done in Return of the Joker.*
*"Terry thinking he was ‘cursed by Batman,’ blaming Bruce for ruining his life, even suspecting that Bruce deliberately set the whole thing up, breaking up with Dana…all these bits originated in that impromptu brainstorming session with me and Glen Murakami.  The Terry / Dana breakup bit was kinda cool:  Terry and Dana go to the wedding of one of her cousins, and you know how people get at weddings; Dana starts hinting that they should think about getting hitched (after they graduate, of course!) and, surprisingly, Terry’s not completely adverse to the idea:  part of him would actually like to settle down with this girl he obviously adores and live something of a normal life, but then he finds out he’s Bruce’s clone, thinks he’s cursed, doesn’t want Dana to have anything to do with him, [etc.]."*
*"Terry deciding to change the Batman paradigm by actually marrying her at story’s end was something we added when writing ‘Epilogue.’  I honestly don’t know how we would have resolved the Dana / Terry thing if we’d made the Batman Beyond version.  Anyhow, that’s it in a nutshell (courtesy of Toon Zone)."*
In the same interview Dwayne McDuffie remarked on Waller’s cloning efforts:

*"Cut from the episode was a scene explaining that Waller did this many times (ala Boys from Brazil) in the hopes of producing one suitable Batman replacement.  Girls would be ignored and left to grow up without interference.  In families with a good male candidate, like Terry’s—any other siblings would be killed along with the parents.  After Phantasm refused to kill Terry, Waller realized how far around the bend she had gone and gave up on the whole project. Terry meeting Bruce later and becoming Batman was indeed coincidence or, more charitably, fate."*