When developing their animated adaptation of
Batman: The Killing Joke, executive producer Bruce Timm stated that they had two options - pad out the Alan Moore's storyline or craft a short introduction to
Batgirl before the events of
The Killing Joke begins.
According to Timm, it would have been a bit sacrilegious to tamper with the source material so he, director Sam Liu and the rest of the creative team chose the latter option. "
We thought if we were going to expand this to feature length, we didn’t want to just pad out the original story by putting in a bunch of stuff between sequences of the story, because it’s literally a whole other half of movie that we could add. So we took that opportunity to basically tell a Batgirl story, which we don’t often get a chance to do these days. And it was great, because we could spend more time with her as a character and get to understand what she’s all about and how she’s similar to Batman in some ways, and really different in others. They come at the crime fighting thing from two completely different places. The good side of that is we get to spend more time with her and learn that she’s an interesting character. We get to really like her. The bad side of that is that we get to like her so much that when The Killing Joke part of the story happens, it’s, like, 'Oh, no!', because we really like her. So it’s a double-edged sword."
With Timm discussing how the film starts and the focus on building up Batgirl before the elements of The Killing Joke start to bring her back down, it will be interesting to see if the film sticks with the original ending for the graphic novel or whether Timm and co. tack on an original epilogue in addition to the prologue?
Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy voice the Joker and Batman, respectively. Tara Strong voices Barbara Gordon. Sam Liu directs, while Bruce Timm serves as executive producer. The film will be the 25th release from the DC Universe: Animated Originals division of WB Animation.
The films goes on-sale on cable and gaming VOD platforms on July 23. Digital retailers like Amazon, vuDu and Xbox place the film on sale July 26. Blu-ray and DVDs go on sale August 02.
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