DC Announces Robin Movie Made With Puppet Animation
Yet another movie set in the world of Batman is headed to theaters.
This one is unique though. Titled Dynamic Duo, it will focus on two different characters who have served as Robin through the years: Dick Grayson (Batman’s original sidekick) and Jason Todd (Dick’s replacement after he aged out of the role, who was later “killed” by the Joker, and then returned as the darker vigilante known as the Red Hood). In a further twist, the film will be stop-motion animated using puppets from the company Swaybox.
The project was announced by DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn who wrote on social media that he was “over the moon excited to announce the newest DC Studios/Warner Bros Pictures Animation greenlit film for theaters, DYNAMIC DUO, the story of Robin… or should I say, Robins, as in Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. The first feature film from the visionary Swaybox, a mix of animation, puppetry, and CGI, a script from the wonderfully talented Matt Aldrich.”
“This is something special,” Gunn added.
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You can see some of Swaybox’s work in this behind-the-scenes clip about the making of a recent Super Bowl commercial that featured their puppets and animation. There’s no reason to assume the characters in Dynamic Duo will look like these NFL player puppets, but it at least gives you a sense of their technology and approach to using puppets and stop-motion animation.
DC currently has multiple Batman movie projects in various stages of development. Matt Reeves is working on a sequel to his 2022 film The Batman, while Gunn’s team is planning a separate Batman movie titled Batman and Robin which would focus on a different Dark Knight and a different Robin than either of the characters in Dynamic Duo. (That Robin would be Damian Wayne, who is Batman’s son with Talia al Ghul.) They’ve also got The Penguin currently airing weekly on HBO and Max.
DC’s Joker: Folie à Deux — another Batman adjacent film — opens in theaters this weekend.