Steven Soderbergh Is the Perfect Director to Help Finish 'The Batman Part II'

Cinephiles and comic book fans are waking up to the news today that Matt Reeves, director of The Batman, has stepped away from its long-awaited sequel due to a personal matter.

The sequel has already faced multiple delays dating back to October 2022. Around that time, Variety reported that Reeves didn't have a finished script, and The Batman Part II wouldn't be ready until at least 2025.

In an Instagram post he made on June 27, 2025, Reeves confirmed the finished script. The original release was slated for Oct. 3, 2025, then pushed by a year to Oct. 2, 2026 (I marked the date with sadness as it just passed). Then it was pushed again by another full year to Oct. 1, 2027, but with current production halted, the date has moved all the way to February 2028.

Variety confirmed that The Batman Part II was filming as recently as May 7.

It's a nightmare scenario with weeks left on a production. With Reeves now indefinitely sidelined, who will step in? Steven Soderbergh, of course. Turns out the Oscar winner called Reeves and offered to help.

"As Matt Reeves continues to attend to an ongoing family matter, Steven Soderbergh, as an admirer of Matt's work, approached Matt and will step in, with the full support of DC Studios, to help the writer-director complete the final weeks of principal photography on The Batman Part 2," the studio said in a statement (via Variety). "Matt and Steven will work closely together with the actors and crew to fulfill Matt's vision of the film."

Reeves posted today on X (formerly Twitter):

Just to be clear, I am not leaving The Batman Part II. I am profoundly grateful to Steven for coming to my aid during this challenging time to help me finish principal photography. Thank you to all for your concern and well wishes. 🦇

Soderbergh is there to make footage that disappears into someone else's movie, and few directors have trained for that as he has.

The Job Is to Be Invisible

As AV Club points out, the language has been exceedingly clear about this still being Reeves' movie, potentially to avoid any similar authorship issues as Zack Snyder saw with Justice League a few years back.

“I thought Matt Reeves’ work on The Batman was stunning; it was intentional, specific, and rigorously coherent," Soderbergh said in a statement. "The goal here is to work with Matt and his team to generate footage that will integrate seamlessly with what’s already been shot so Matt can properly finish his film."

Again, his statements clearly position him as a supporting role. In theory, this is closer to an elevated second unit director's role than a replacement.

'The Knick' Credit: HBO

Soderbergh Has Done This Exact Job Before

This is not new territory for the director. In 2011, Gary Ross called in Soderbergh for two days of second unit on The Hunger Games. Soderbergh had produced Ross's Pleasantville, and Hunger Games production designer Phil Messina had worked on many of Soderbergh's films.

People were confused by this at the time, especially after a crew member let it slip online that Soderbergh was on the film.

Soderbergh told Moviefone in 2011:

The story is really simple. Back in April, [director] Gary [Ross]—who is a close friend of mine I've exchanged creative favors with non-stop over the last 15 years—when he got the boards for the shoot in April called me and said, "Hey, first week of August, I got these two days of second unit. Is there any way you can come down and help me out? Because I'd rather have you do it than hire somebody who I don't know." I said, "Actually, that works out." We'll just be finishing Contagion'and prepping Magic Mike'and, yeah, it could be fun.

Cut to two months later, and I show up to do this thing. Of course the whole design of it and what's fun about it, for me, is my job is to come in and duplicate exactly what Gary and Tom Stern, the [cinematographer], are doing. To mimic as closely as I can to their aesthetic. And that's what I attempted to do. But if I've done my job properly, I hope I did, by design, you won't be able to tell what I did. Because it's supposed to cut seamlessly into what they're doing. That's the whole point. That's why he asked me to come down, because he knew that I would be rigorous about matching what they were doing.

What should be encouraging for Batman fans is that Soderbergh does not have an ego about supporting another director. He cares about fidelity to the original vision and letting his own direction disappear into the rest of the film.

One reason he's so good at disappearing into another director's style is that he studies others' work so intensely. His 2014 black-and-white, soundless recut of Raiders of the Lost Ark was built as a staging study that he did, just for fun.

Soderbergh Is a Workhorse

If you know anything about how Soderbergh works, you know he's one of the most efficient directors working in the industry right now. He's fast, he knows what he wants, and he doesn't linger on anything that doesn't need it. He said Unsane was shot in two weeks.

He thinks like a crew. He shoots his films as "Peter Andrews" and edits as "Mary Ann Bernard," so he knows whether footage will cut. He often finishes his projects ahead of time and under budget, which is a miracle any time it happens.

And he does all this while still pushing boundaries and getting creative with his storytelling.

"Luckily because of the way I began, I'm the cockroach of this industry. I can survive any version of it," he told AP in 2025 (via Yahoo).

This type of speed will be necessary to finish this long-gestating Batman follow-up. We're excited to see how the vision comes together.