Why Batman Gets More Movies Than Superman Revealed by DC Producer

Josie Campbell, the producer of My Adventures with Superman and other DC films including Justice League: War World and Teen Titans Go!, was questioned by The Comics Cube about why there have been more Batman films produced than Superman films.

As a flood of Bat-Media was released in the 1980s and 1990s, Campbell described the Dark Knight's ascent to icon status in the general public:

“I feel like it’s like the eternal question of just, ‘What makes something hit?’ And I think some of it is, we got into this area with Batman, especially in… the ’80s and ’90s, where I think the grittier, Frank Miller-inspired version of him hit and we all liked that. And we got that Bruce Timm version, which is very inspired by that, and it’s that film Noir, and there’s this grittiness to him that differentiated him in a way… I love the ’60s Batman, but it’s completely different. It is like its own thing.”

“So I think it took a while, but we as a culture were like, ‘This is fun. This is what we like.’ I think for Superman, Superman out the gate was popular. People love Superman. Superman was fun, Superman was funny, optimistic. And then we kind of hit the slew where people weren’t sure what to do with him.”

“And I think it’s around the same time that you’ve got Batman rising and Superman falling. And I think what we were trying to do is get back to that optimism, and that joy, and that faith, and that heart. And people gravitate towards different things at different times.”

“In the ’90s, I was loving the stories where like Superman’s getting beaten up by Doomsday, which is a very different flavor. But I think now is a time where people really do want that earnest, corn-fed, Kansas boy who knows right from wrong to come in and save us, whether it’s the world around you, whether it’s the pandemic we just went through, whatever is going on in your life I think, there’s like a want for that again in a way that we haven’t culturally, at least for America, we haven’t needed or wanted in a while.”