Batman Beyond is a cult-classic animated show for DC geeks. While it doesn't have the fanbase that Justice League has, and it certainly wasn't as critically acclaimed as Batman: The Animated Series is, fans are still eager for a Batman Beyond live-action show. With Batman Beyond's companion series, Static Shock, moving into live-action development, fans believe this could open up a door to seeing a real-life Terry McGinnis.
For a whole new generation of Batman fans, Batman Beyond made kids feel like they could become The Dark Knight. This is because the show featured a teenager dawning the cape and cowl in a futuristic world where Bruce Wayne was an old-man and long-since retired. But this story decision didn't come from a natural extension of Bruce Wayne's character arc... it came from the popularity of Dawson's Creek and Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Yeah... Buffy The Vampire Slayer inspired Batman Beyond. Here's how...
Nobody Wanted To Make 'Batman Beyond'
Thanks to a superb documentary about the creation of Batman Beyond by IGN, we now know that it was the popularity of the WB/CW shows that spawned the idea of a much younger Batman.
After the success of Batman: The Animated Series, the WB network (now known as the CW) decided to completely re-do the look of the show and then adapt that into a larger universe that featured the likes of Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Superman. Around the same time, they created Batman Beyond.
While "the Batman of the future" show only ran from 1999 until 2001, it still has a fanbase today. This is amazing given the fact that nobody actually wanted to make it...
Bruce Timm and Alan Burnett, two of the masterminds behind Batman: The Animated Series, were always curious about caring over Kevin Conroy's excellent Bruce Wayne/Batman into the future, but the networks just weren't interested... Not until the idea to make Batman a teenager came about.
This specific ask could've led the producers of the show down a rabbit hole of terrible ideas... However, it actually created something truly unique and quite special.
Influenced By Buffy
After The New Batman Adventures (the sequel to Batman: The Animated Series) was strangely canceled despite being successful, series creator Bruce Timm really wanted to do something more with the character.
While we don't have a definitive answer to why The New Batman Adventures was canceled, it probably has something to do with the popularity of Dawson's Creek, Felicity, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, according to IGN. At the time, they were the WB network's most popular shows. This meant that the audience the network was attracting tended to be a little older than the kids that Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures were targeting. This meant that the network wanted to only target that demographic, and therefore any more Batman stories would have to do that.
And thus the teenage Batman was born.
"I don't know if it was toyline related or what, but I think Buffy was doing really well from [the network], so I think they wanted a version of Batman similar to Buffy," Batman Beyond producer Glen Murakami told IGN.
Creating The Teenage Batman
Since a teenage version of Batman didn't fit into the mythology of the animated universe of the character as well as the comics' canon, the writers of the show had to come up with something different. After all, in both The Animated Series and the comics, Bruce Wayne didn't become Batman until he was in his late twenties. Therefore, there was just no way to use Bruce Wayne as a teen.
When Bruce Timm and the team behind The Animated Series sat down with the WB, the idea to explore a Batman tale in the not-to-distant future was finally accepted. This is because both the network and the writers wanted to keep the continuity they had established in their previous series, see Batman in the future, and provide a realistic opportunity for a younger man to take up the cape and cowl.
"It's like a new generation of Samurai passing his sword onto his protege," one of the network executives said, according to Bruce Timm in his IGN interview.
This idea got the network excited and got Bruce Timm and his team the 'green light' to produce an entire season for the following fall.
However, this was stressful for the creative team because they weren't entirely sure of the pitch that they just sold. But once Bruce Timm started to talk the idea through with producer Glen Murakami, he began to get excited about it. And a lot of that excitement came from the comparison to another superhero... Spider-Man... A teenager who has to balance his school and social life with his duty to being a superhero.
Thankfully, the creators of the show did become excited about it. If they didn't, fans would never have received as strong of a show as Batman Beyond.