The world of DC Comics is being introduced to a whole new generation of audiences with Batwheels. The animated series centers on the team of super-vehicles developed by Batman for him and his team, Robin and Batgirl, as they learn to work together to save Gotham from the Legion of Zoom.
Batwheels features a star-studded roster of actors bringing the cast of characters to life, some of whom include Ethan Hawke as Batman, along with AJ Hudson, Leah Lewis, Jacob Bertrand, Jordan Reed, Madigan Kacmar, Noah Bentley, Lilimar, Kimberly D. Brooks, and Mick Wingert. The series marks the first-ever Batman project developed specifically for preschoolers, delivering plenty of heartwarming life lessons, as well as eye-popping animation and Easter eggs for longtime DC Comics fans.
Ahead of the show's premiere, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with creator Michael G. Stern and supervising producer Simon J. Smith to discuss Batwheels, how they went about translating the DC Comics world for young audiences, and more.
Creative Team Talks Batwheels
Screen Rant: I'm very excited to talk about Batwheels. I caught the first few episodes this morning, and it's such a sweet little series, especially for a DC fan like myself. How did the concept for this really start?
Michael G. Stern: Well, Warner Bros. Animation had wanted to find a way to connect with the youngest audiences for a long time with their DC properties, and sort of had some trouble. I came aboard and immediately looked at what had been done already in this area and found that, in most cases, when they tried to do superheroes for young kids, they're sort of dumbing down the characters, and they're kiddifying them.
Kids are not given enough credit, the youngest kids, they can see through this, and it just doesn't feel right to them. For us, because we were also asked to really respect the character of Batman, the first decision was keeping Batman cool, not kiddifying him, not dumbing him down, but keeping him the same cool guy that everybody knows, the only thing Batman doesn't do on our show is punch people in the face.
Other than that, he does everything, the detective work, the swinging around rooftops, all that great Batman stuff, so why shouldn't the youngest kids get that version? No wonder they haven't clicked yet with the characters, because they haven't really been presented with those characters, as we know them. So, that was the first decision, and once that was in place, we had to find characters that could connect with that young audience, so the Batwheels came into play. Those are the kids on our show, and those are the characters that our young audience can see the world through.
It's such a unique way to introduce younger audiences to this world. I'm surprised it hasn't been done already.
Simon J. Smith: That's what was great about the writing, because when I came onboard, Michael had written the first few scripts, and that's what I loved about it. It wasn't bashing people over the head with messages or anything, and it wasn't kiddifying anything. It was just staying authentic, and true, to Batman and Gotham and all the Bat villains, it was fantastic.
What was it like coming up with the look for the show? Because this thing feels just as big as a cinematic animated movie.
Simon J. Smith: Well, I come from movies, so I think part of the cocktail that Sam Register, the President of WB Animation, had in his mind was putting Michael, who's brilliantly written lots of other preschool shows, and together with me, I've worked on a lot of short films for DreamWorks. I was at DreamWorks for 19 years with Shrek and directed a bunch of stuff for them. So, they had me at Batman, I was very excited, and I read Michael's scripts and was like, "This is going to be phenomenal."
We both agreed that we're aiming for the same thing, which is to elevate this preschool space as high as we could, so when you watch the show, it feels like you're watching a piece of a movie. That's what the goal was, it was to try and bring as much cinematics and fun and action, but still keep it legitimate to Gotham and Batman. There were two words, fun and legitimacy, which don't normally go hand-in-hand, but we're trying to ride that line, and stay true to the IP, stay true to the writing, but at the same time have as much fun as possible.
Was 3D always the thought process for developing this world? Because we've seen Gotham in 2D in a variety of shows.
Simon J. Smith: Absolutely, yeah, because I come from the 3D world. But, there's some really nice things we've done, I think, which really help make it safe and familiar for a preschool space, but also make it visceral at the same time. Because you have the CG-ness, the 3D part of it, which is a legitimate part, which is a different part of the design. We came up with a cocktail, which is fast and furious, and Batman equals Batwheels when you're executing it. So, with the 3D, you have the visceral impact of that, of the shininess of the vehicles, of the streets, of the three dimensions, but with CG, you can be very intense in terms of realism, in terms of fire and smoke and water and explosions.
So, we knew immediately we weren't going to do that, we wanted to create this nice combination of techniques, and we decided to use 2D on the effects. Any big effect, like water, fire, explosion, smoke, that's going to be 2D, and it all came from a test that our supervising animator did, Michael Berardini, where he put animated 2D versions of the eyes and the mouth in the grill, but on two's, not on one's. So, you're doing it more like a TV show from Saturday morning or something like that, a more familiar feel to the animation, so it's not super smooth. That combination of techniques is fantastic, because it gave you the familiarity of animation, of 2D, but in the fun part of it, you're getting the visceral impact of the 3D.
It really does work so well to keep that energy and that unique style going for a comic book adaptation. You have so many great characters in the show outside of the Batwheels. Was there any one in particular that you enjoyed bringing to life the most?
Michael G. Stern: Well, it's funny, because early on, there was a lot of talk about our kids, "Once they see Batman on the show, are they going to care about all the vehicle characters, are they just going to want to watch Batman?" So, there was some nervousness about this, so creating the Batwheels, and their personalities, and making them really lovable, fun characters, a diverse group, that was really key.
Coming up with new characters like Buff the Bat-Truck, who hadn't been seen, once we got a really good handle on those characters, and we did a little testing with young kids, they loved them, and they love them just as much as they love Batman. That was a big sigh of relief, and we realized, "Oh, now we can go any direction." So, I think we're particularly proud of all the vehicle characters, not just the designs, but just the personalities that we imbued them with, and the character arcs that they all have for the series going forward.
And that extends to the villains, too, and just the amount of fun and whimsy we're able to have with the villains. For the Legion of Zoom, for example, we didn't want to just repeat the personality types of their drivers, so the Joker's van isn't just exactly like the Joker, but in van form, he's a little different, so the Joker van is kind of based on a surfer bus. With that in mind, he's more of like a surfer dude, which we think is great, and it gives us something different to play. So, we found ways of riffing off, and it just became its own. There's the old expression, "It writes itself," and in this case, once you develop really great characters, it really does write itself, and they just start going on these adventures for you.
The Batgirl cycle is my favorite of the Batwheels, because she's just got such a great, unique personality. I love her episode, but I'm partially biased, because it's also got Harley Quinn in it. How did you go about putting the cast together for this thing, it's crazy to see the stacked roster that you guys have, especially, of course, Ethan Hawke as Batman.
Simon J. Smith: We have a fantastic casting department at Warner Bros, and we just reached out to lots of different people. We had a list of potential Batmans, and Ethan jumped at it, he really respected the writing, he was very complimentary about the writing, and he could see what we were trying to do with the preschool space, we're calling it pre-cool, because we're trying to have it aspirational.
He just enjoyed the character, and he was incredibly patient, because we started all this in the pandemic, and Ethan had to be his own tech support in a closet with a bunch of pillows and duvets, and he was incredibly patient with the recording process. But he really loved being Batman, and he really enjoyed the writing, and the humor, and the sort of tongue in cheek, exhausted dad energy that Batman was giving off towards Batgirl and Robin. We literally recorded him yesterday, and he was so good, he got straight in the pocket so quickly. He's just a joy to work with, an absolute joy, so classy in every way.
How about the rest of the cast? What was it like finding the perfect performers to help bring your characters to life?
Michael G. Stern: It took a long time, it takes a while to really find things that just work perfectly and match perfectly, having done it before. The mix of kids and adults is another thing, you want to try to get as many kids as possible, because we think that's the more authentic way of having a kid come across. So, it's a mixture of new actors who were getting their first shot, which is always so great. Super pros, like animation pros like Tom Kenny or Mick Wingert, who've done a million things, Jess Harnell, those are in there too. Great film actors like Ethan and Gina Rodriguez, those are sprinkled throughout, so I just think it's a really nice balanced mix. Once the voices get in there, that's a really important part of adding to the design, so that once they heard the voices, the character designers really are able to hone in on that better. The writers are able to write stories for them better, so it all builds to be part of the same stew.
Simon J. Smith: Yeah, it's amazing, actually. Because when we listen to different people, we text each other, and we go, "Oh! Bee, you remember Bee, right?" Michael and I literally agree on the same thing all the time, it's crazy whenever we have notes about casting or anything, and we found Jacob and were like, "Oh my god, Jacob, right?" We go, "Yes."
Michael G. Stern: He's amazing. We should take a second to talk about Jacob Bertrand, Bam, who is the star of this show. He comes over from Cobra Kai, we have a couple of guys from Cobra Kai, we have Xolo Maridueña, he's Snowy, Mr. Freeze's snow crawler, and he's just such a wonderful, heartwarming character. He brought something wonderful to it. But Jacob, really, when you have these shows, and you have a star, you really need that star to anchor it, and Jacob has such a warm, every-kid presence. It absolutely imbues the show with relatability, and kids can really understand and relate to him. He's not perfect, he's flawed, but yet, he's trying really hard. He's a great friend to the other Batwheels, and Jacob just has all that going on.
Simon J. Smith: He's so natural and genuine, when he gets into performing, he's in like the Tom Holland, Michael J. Fox, bracket, he's that good. He just slips into it so effortlessly, and he takes direction so perfectly, he's amazing as Bam. To carry this series, it's quite hard to feel that genuine, but also be fun and also be accessible, he's really good. There's also other people we find like, SungWon Cho, who's a crazy influencer, but incredibly fun and incredibly talented. He plays two characters, he plays the Batcomputer and the Riddler, and he's been an absolute joy to work with too. So lots of different people from different places.
Michael G. Smith: We found him through my kids, great guy, you have to check him out on the internet, so if you get a chance to check out SungWon Cho, he's really fantastic.
We've seen some characters be played by the same actor a lot throughout the years. Did you specifically want to move away from some of those recurring actors for your show, like with Joker, did you want to move away from Mark Hamill and Alan Tudyk? Or what was it really more just about what fit the vibe?
Michael G. Smith: It's funny, I think it is more about what fit the vibe. But Mick Wingert does an amazing Joker, he also plays Moe the Bat Bot, the repair bot, so he does double duty on our show and is amazing. I do think his Joker sort of riffs off of Mark Hamill Joker, in some ways, it just sort of grows out of that, but he finds his own sort of fun directions to go with it. Because on Batwheels, you're competing with a lot, right? There's explosions, there's engines, there's sound effects, so we always tell the actors, particularly the villains, go over the top, then go over the top of that, choose some scenery and then chew some more, because you can't go too big when it comes to the villain characters.
But yeah, I think it's a question of each time just sort of what is the vibe, so when we created the villains, we sort of have a lane for our villains, each of them. That's the simple way to reach this audience, is pick a lane, so for instance, Harley Quinn, we didn't have the sexual parts of Harley, or the psychotic parts. We just play her as a kid who has no boundaries, who just wants to have fun all the time. Just fun, fun, fun, no boundaries, no stopping, and her favorite thing to do is to prank Batman. So, once you get that going, then you can give the actor something to go on, you know what their character really loves to do, more than anything else, that's where you can sort of match what you have going on.
We did toy around with some of the existing people who had done other versions before, but we're sort of striking out on our own, and we wanted to, you know, this is going to be the first Batman show for a whole new generation. Also, it was really important, I should really bring this up, that it be diverse. We have the first ever African-American Robin on screen, we have an Asian-American Batgirl, our cast of villains, we have an African-American Mr. Freeze and an Asian-American Riddler, and we can go on and on. This was really important to us that we wanted for little kids, for kids that young, our cast needs to reflect the world out there the way it is.
It really is important, especially at such an early age to help normalize that diversity for younger audiences. Do you have thoughts on potential future stories after this first Batwheels season?
Michael G. Stern: Oh, for sure. I think we were told by the powers that be at DC that we are part of the DC Multiverse, that the Batwheels verse is its own part of the multiverse, so we are going to draw on all of it down the line, and you'll start to see more of it coming into play. But it'll be our own sort of Batwheels universe of those characters, so they'll come in driving vehicles, or being vehicles, and the settings will all be a little more vehicle-leaning, a little more colorful and fun.
That sounds very exciting. How do you feel leading up to the wider release of the show?
Simon J. Smith: We can't wait, we had such a blast making the show, and we still are. We can't wait for people to get introduced to different parts of the Batwheels universe, and different characters, and see what they think. It's been one of the best projects I've ever worked on, it's been so much fun, and to play around in Gotham with these characters has been an absolute joy.
Do you do each of you have any dream character to help bring in next? Or do you have to keep your lips sealed for the few episodes that I have yet to see?
Michael G. Stern: We don't want to spoil any surprises. But, yes, I certainly have dream characters, being a DC nerd, just like you, there's lots of things I can't wait to bring in, and lots more from the Batman universe, also. We found that you can even tap things, although we're sticking with the sort of fun, colorful villains and whatnot, there are ways to even bring in villains that would surprise you into our universe, that you may think, at first glance, seem too intense for kids. But once we sort of touch them with the magic Batwheels wand, and sort of put them in our world, there are ways of integrating it all. So we're looking forward to it
Simon J. Smith: There's loads of fun stuff we're gonna have.
About Batwheels
Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, “Batwheels” marks DC’s first-ever Batman preschool series, offering young viewers a high-speed, vibrant CGI-animated iteration of the Caped Crusader. Little ones and their families will ride along with an amazing team of super-vehicles—Bam (the Batmobile), Bibi (the Batgirl Cycle), Redbird (Robin’s racecar), Buff (the Bat-Truck), and Batwing (the Bat-plane)—as they help Batman, Batgirl, and Robin keep the streets of Gotham City safe. Whether it’s facing down the Legion of Zoom or one of Gotham City’s notorious Super-Villains, the Batwheels will use their incredible gadgets and creative teamwork to save the day.
The first seven episodes of Batwheels are now streaming on HBO Max's Cartoonito hub.
