According to Batman Unburied creator and executive producer David S. Goyer, the podcast series always intended to have a Bruce Wayne/Batman who was a person of color.
In an interview with Variety, Goyer and Batman Unburied star Winston Duke discussed how they went about telling Batman's story in the new Spotify podcast series. Goyer said that he always intended this incarnation of Batman to be a person of color and discussed the idea with studio heads during the early days when the series was coming together. "That was literally the first exploratory conversation [with DC/Warner Bros. execs] — I said, ‘Are you open to that?’” Goyer said.
In Batman Unburied, Duke, who has also starred in Marvel's Black Panther and Jordan Peele's Us, plays Bruce Wayne as he works as a forensic pathologist in Gotham Hospital when a new serial killer named The Harvester (voiced by Sam Witwatersrand) emerges in Gotham. Playing a Black Batman, Duke told Variety, represents "a social-justice advocate’s wet dream." He said, "How would I, as a powerful person of color with billions of dollars, change the world… and a justice system that feels like I couldn’t come out on the right end?" Duke also said he's received an outpouring of support from fans for his work on Batman Unburied. "People said how relieving and comforting my voice is,” he commented. "Someone said, 'I love that Bruce Wayne has a hint of a Caribbean dialect!'"
While Bruce attempts to use his detective background to track down The Harvester, the character is also dealing with a fractured psyche. The first two episodes of Batman Unburied throw Bruce into a world in which his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne, are still alive. "I knew it was a big swing, and kind of a wild swing, but Spotify, DC and Warner Bros. were all supportive of it,” Goyer said. “We were recontextualizing the Batman story from a different angle… I said, 'There’s no point in doing this story — there’ve been so many Batman stories told — if we’re not doing something different.' I was intrigued with the idea of, What would happen if Bruce Wayne’s parents hadn’t been killed?" Later episodes of the series revealed Bruce created this imaginary version of his parents and that they still died when he was just a child.
Batman Unburied launched in May from DC. Now eight episodes into the series, additional voice actors involved with Batman Unburied include Gina Rodriguez, Jason Isaacs, Hasan Minhaj, Lance Reddick Ashely Burch and John Rhys-Davies.
Batman Unburied airs exclusively on Spotify.
Source: Variety
