The animated DC Studios world gets cuter and more action-packed as Bat-Fam continues the adventures of Damien Wayne (Yonas Kibreab) as Little Batman from Merry Little Batman.
io9 sat down with Mike Roth, executive producer and showrunner of DC Studios and WB Animation’s release Bat-Fam. Now streaming on Prime Video, the series picks up on the entertaining superheroic family antics at Wayne Manor with Damien and Bruce Wayne (Luke Wilson), along with new friends and foes.
© Prime VideoSabina Graves, io9: I’m a really big fan of Merry Little Batman, so I was excited to find out this is going to be a series when it was announced. Was it always the plan to launch off from the movie into a series, or how did both projects come about?
Mike Roth: Yeah, I think initially we just set out to make humble beginnings. We just set out to make a movie. And I think as we got the movie going, we quickly just wanted to see more of Gotham, of this world, through this design lens and see what other villains look like and just expand this world out and see what else we can do. And the relationship between Bruce and Damon, I think it’s so special. It’s a very different kind of Bruce relationship, like with his wards and with his son. And I think he just wanted to explore more of that and see what else we can do.
io9: Yes, definitely. And I really like this concept of found family that’s established early on with Claire (Volcana reformed and made young by the Lazarus Pit, voiced by Haley Tju) and Alicia (Pennyworth, voiced by London Hughes) coming in and sort of seeing that dynamic as well. Can you talk a bit more about why those characters were the perfect foils to bring in to challenge Damien but also help him figure out what family means?
Roth: I think you’re exactly right. I think the operating word is “challenge,” you know, like what kind of characters complement them and challenge them. As a little kid, I never had an older sibling, and I always thought it would be really cool to have an older sibling. And I think for Damien, it’s like that desire to have an older sibling, to have a sister, and that’s a wish fulfillment for him with Claire coming in. And I think it works really well with her in that she has a power of fire, but then symbolically she is a little bit fiery because she’s at that teenage age, so she can be a little snarky. Maybe she’s like transitioning to adulthood essentially, so for her hanging out with a younger brother, that brings a really fun dynamic because he’s yearning for something that she—even though I think she’s yearning for it too—outwardly projects this idea of, like, “I’m moving away from that.” So that’s a fun dynamic to have.
© Prime VideoAnd then with Bruce and Alicia, you know, we’ve seen so many iterations of Bruce’s childhood where it’s just him as a child and an alley, his parents get murdered, and that’s all we see. So with this, it’s like, what does it look like if he has a childhood friend who is now part of his life as an adult? That’s what Alicia brings to the mix, and because they had that very close relationship growing up and they were almost like family members to each other. And she has a perspective with Bruce that’s unique, and she also has a voice with Bruce that is unique. She has that comfort level with him that she can push him and, you know, get under his skin a little bit sometimes when he needs it, but then also that comfort level of, like, this is a very safe, amazing relationship that they’ve had because they’ve had it for their entire lives. Yes, definitely. And it’s been fun to see those relationships established, along with the backdrop of all these adversaries coming in.
io9: I grew up with Batman: The Animated Series. And so it’s fun to see episodes that bring in all the different rogues. Can you talk a bit about your selection of the bad guys we’re going to be seeing this season, and was it sort of like wish fulfillment to be like, “Okay, I really wanted to see this character come in. And what would that look like?”
Roth: Oh, 100%. You know, I mean, in my opinion, the rogues gallery in Batman has the absolute best villains that there are. He has such a huge collection of villains, and they’re also dynamic and interesting. And I’ve said a couple times, we love this design so much that we wanted to see other villains through this lens and what they would look like, so I think we have two tiers of villains in this property, for the television series. One, the villains who have remained villains, like the big baddies who are very scary, like Solomon Grundy, Killer Croc, Live Wire, and Mad Hatter. They all make an appearance.
But then we have this other set of villains who, in the movie, Batman cleaned up, but then Gotham completely got rid of crime. And I think some of those super villains took that to heart, and they decided, you know, we do want to reform, and we do want to roll back into society. So we have this other tier that Alicia is the therapist for, this group of villains that are reforming, and that group is called E-VIL, which stands for ex-villains. That tier is hilarious because they want to be like normal citizens, but they’ve been villains for so long. And they’ve got to roll back in, and they still keep their villain costumes.
© Prime VideoAnd, you know, that tier’s like King Tut, Killer Moth, Copperhead, Giganta—she’s so big you never actually see her face; you only ever see her feet. And that’s where I think, on the two sides of it, like the ones who actually are still engaging in criminal enterprise, we wanted those to be scary and have the proper amount of stakes. While for the other tier, I think we really wanted to lean into the humor. You know, and so like, King Tut’s hilarious, especially when you see his underwear.
io9: As a fan of the brand of Batman, just that whole world, what were some of your favorite Easter eggs to put in that you would like to point out to fans?
Roth: I think my all-time favorite is from the movie, and that’s Carmine Infantino [DC Comics legend] in the toy store, when Damien bumps a guy and he’s holding a coffee cup, and he gets coffee all over himself, and he’s like, “Terrific.” That’s the character of Carmine, and that’s actually Carmine’s voice. So that’s my favorite of all of them.
Bat-Fam is now streaming on Prime Video.
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