Johannesburg - “Batwheels” marks DC’s first-ever Batman preschool show featuring a high-speed, vibrant CGI-animated iteration of the Caped Crusader.
The fun-filled action-adventure show combines some of youngsters’ favourite things – superheroes and vehicles. Together, they’re the Batwheels, a group of sentient super-powered crime-fighting vehicles defending Gotham City alongside a host of DC superheroes.
Brought to life by the Batcomputer to help defend Gotham City, the heroic Batwheels are thrust into hilarious high jinks and jaw-dropping action while learning important life lessons. Led by Bam, the Batmobile, the Batwheels must navigate the challenges of being a newly formed super team as well as the growing pains that come with just being a kid.
The series features Ethan Hawke as Batman, Leah Lewis as Cassandra Cain/Batgirl and Jacob Bertrand as Bam the Batmobile, among others.
The show’s creators believe that “Batwheels” will resonate with audiences of all ages, introducing Batman to the younger viewers and giving them an animated Batman story to call their own while allowing parents to enjoy their favourite DC superhero with their kids.
Executive producer Michael G Stern, and supervising producer Simon J Smith spoke about what viewers can expect from the new series and shared more about the vehicles, the style and the multi-generational appeal of “Batwheels”.
To kick off, you must both be great Batman fans to have created this show. So, to both of you, what are your earliest childhood memories of Batman?
Michael: My earliest memory is of me taking one of my mother’s towels out of the bathroom and tying it around my neck, then running around the house going Pow! Pam! Like Adam West, because I loved the old 1960 series, we saw it on the reruns in the United States. And I fell in love with Batman.
Simon: I have a similar type of memory. We used to play Batman in the UK by using our school uniforms. We just used to do the top button of our school shirts, then take our arms out of the shirt. That was our cape. I grew up in the ’70s, late ’60s and ’70s. We had classic bamboo bannisters going from the ceiling to the stairwell. So, I would leap and jump on and grab one of the bamboo poles and slide down like that. And that was my earliest memory.
Michael, what inspired the new vibrant CGI-animated iteration of the Caped Crusader, and how is Batman in this series any different to the Batman we all know and love?
Michael: Warner Bros. had been struggling to crack Batman for a younger audience and couldn't understand why. The reason is that kids have never been able to see the real Batman that you and I love. They've always gotten a sort of a “kidified”, dumbed-down version of Batman. So, the plan with “Batwheels” right from the start was to present the same Batman everyone knows and loves, punching, kicking, and that sort of thing. We then presented Batwheels as the kid characters through which our audience could see the show. That’s how we managed to crack it and make it a multi-generational show, where moms, older siblings, and just Batman fans in general can enjoy it differently.
Was it difficult to change up the characters to introduce Batman and the crew to the younger viewers, giving them an animated Batman story that they can actually now call their own?
Simon: Michael’s writing is the foundation of the show. He had already written four scripts, a fantastic springboard to try and visualise how we would bring The Dark Knight to four-year-olds. We wanted to keep Batman the same but not divulge the dark secrets that the other universes do. That’s how we managed to keep the legitimacy of Gotham and Batman. The two words that really went through the whole series, stemming from Michael’s writing through the design, characters, cars, and everything, were legitimate and fun.
That’s where the ideas came from with the combinations of the computer-generated (CG) cars and the CG characters, but then mixing in a blend into 2-D animated elements to keep it more in that sort of younger audience feel of Saturday morning cartoons. We used lots of techniques because CG can be very visceral and realistic, and we didn't want to scare the younger audience.
Aren’t the Legion of Zoom and other arch-villains terrifying to a four-year-old?
Michael: When you really look at the Batman villains in “Batwheels”, so many of them are colourful and fun and goofy. It’s only lately that you know that Batman's interpretations have gotten darker and darker, and that’s become very popular. That’s the beauty of Batman. He can be taken in a lot of directions. All we’re doing is hearkening back to, for instance, the old 1966 Adam West show, where they were bright, colourful and silly. As a kid, I watched them, and I was never afraid, you know, I just thought they were goofy. That said, you have to pick the right Batman villains. There are certainly some of them that are too dark, but once we had the idea of the roster, we created sort of silly motivations for each of them, so that they don't have the same dark history that all these things have.
So, for instance, Harley Quinn is just like a kid who has no boundaries. She just doesn’t know how to say no. She just wants to have fun, fun, fun all the time. The most fun thing for her is to goof on Batman. So, we picked a lane for each of them, then Simon added the design element, the super whimsical, fun design element that’s so brilliant.
Parents are sometimes captivated by the shows their kids watch. Michael, what element do you think would attract parents to watch “Batwheels” and ultimately enjoy their favourite DC superhero with their kids?
Michael: When I was younger, I enjoyed it on an amazing, colourful, heroic level, then later, when I went to college, I found the show hilarious, enjoying it on an entirely different level.
The idea with “Batwheels” is that it draws in the younger and older audience. Little ones love cars and superheroes. It’s a no-brainer. But for everybody who just loves Batman, we’re giving them Ethan Hawke, amazing – he takes on the villains and characters in the Batman family.
We brought Simon in to give the series a feature quality, and it’s stunning. So, I think the parents will appreciate the look and feel of Gotham City. Having this entire series take place at night was a challenge because it’s unusual for a preschool show. It’s supposed to be bright sunshine and puffy clouds and rainbows. Simon took up this challenge of making the night-time colourful, amazing, and full of incredible adventure. The look and the fun whimsy of all the designs make it a super fun show for everybody to watch, especially for DC fans.
Simon: My approach is to combine fast and furious with Batman and blend them together. That’s what will appeal to the older audience. They’ll appreciate the sophisticated camerawork and the editing because it will feel like a cinematic experience.
Hawke, Jacob Bertrand, and AJ Hudson are leading the voice cast for “Batwheels”. What was it like working with them, Simon? Did it take them long to take on the characters you had created?
Simon: The answer is no. From the beginning, Michael and I had an amazing collaboration. When we started working on the first animatic for the show, we kind of had exactly the same notes and were both on the same page as far as voice casting, composers and everything. So when we heard a selection of actors, we immediately knew Jacob was the perfect fit. He had exactly what we were looking for, that Michael J Fox universal appeal that we loved in “Back to the Future”. He brought this fantastic feel to the character.
Michael: They are all great and so comfortable. They even started informing the animation with their performances, helping the animators figure out something past what they had originally envisioned into something else, something new.
Simon: The voice drives the performance. Everybody’s hanging at the very beginning, where there are black-and-white drawings and animatics of the characters. Then that builds on the performance of the animators. The CG animators then come in and hear the performance and start interpreting that voice into more things, too.
Michael: Specifically, Ethan Hawke brought what we like to call the exhausted dad energy. It’s something that we call the Batman grumble. He’s trying to stay patient with these young characters that he has and all this crazy stuff that’s going on around him. So we really seized on that and wrote that into the character. That’s where a lot of the comedy comes from because we don’t make fun of Batman the way Lego Batman did or the way Adam West did, as he was more of a parody. We play the characters as they are, but we get the comedy out of imagining Batman trying to remodel his kitchen; the countertops don’t quite fit right, and it’s the wrong wood for the cabinets, and he’s trying to stay cool and calm.
A question to both of you again – who is your favourite character, and why? I know, it is most probably like asking a parent who their favourite child is … but shoot.
Michael: I love them all so much because there are so many amazing characters. However, I always come back to Bam, the Batmobile. I've always loved the Batmobile since I was a tiny kid, and, you know, Bam is kind of me in the way I wrote it. He’s every kid, as Simon was saying, you know, he’s sort of got that every kid feel, and it’s great seeing the world through him. I think I relate to him.
Simon: I can’t really answer that question with a favourite, but what I really love about the show is the car designs. It was a real challenge to get some cars like the Batmobile to look really cool but still be able to emote at the same time. He’s a car that Batman would drive and be really cool in and save Gotham in, but at the same time, being an incredibly appealing character. I really love our vehicle designs, and I think we’ve done a great job of giving you the decency and the fun, and the appeal of the characters and how the voices exude through them. So I really love our vehicle designs and the humans too.
Michael, in Africa, it is of utmost importance to our viewers to drive inclusivity. Does “Batwheels” allow every young viewer to see themselves represented on screen, whether through the depiction of characters or in terms of the voice actors?
Michael: Diversity was a huge goal right from the start. The very first African-American Robin seen on screen was taken from a true DC character, Duke Thomas. The thought that there’s a young African-American kid somewhere or an African or South African child who will see this as their first Robin is an awesomely cool thought.
Simon: We want to make sure that everybody who is viewing, whether preschoolers, 8- to 10-year-olds, or teens, can all look over each other’s shoulder or style that looks really cool. And they can associate and relate to everything that’s going on.
Michael, how receptive do you think the African audience will be – do you think they will be able to relate to the show?
Michael: We have an incredibly diverse cast, and I’ve always felt that representation is huge. Even if you don’t delve into different cultures as much as just show kids the world as it looks to them. Show them that TV is a world that reflects their world. When I was growing up, TV was sort of like this magical place that didn’t really exist. We think this will make the show relatable.
We know the series follows the sentient vehicles as they “navigate the growing pains of being a newly formed super team as well as the growing pains that come with just being a kid”. What key learnings will children take from the new series, Michael? Is there a message in each episode to help build their young characters?
Michael: There's actually a hero curriculum that we developed with the consultants that we have on the show, and it’s all-around teamwork. The core message in “Batwheels” is really about taking your own diversity, all the things that make you unique, and expressing that to the world. What’s inside you is what makes you a hero.
What will be the one catchphrase that parents will hear over and over again from the new generation of little Batman fans?
Rev up and peel out!
The “Batwheels” series will run every weekend at 8.40 CAT on Cartoonito Africa, which is available on DStv (channel 302), GOtv (channel 68) (channel 155 in Ghana and channel 357 in Uganda), AzamTV (channel 227) and Canal+ Ethiopia (channel 127).