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Want to go back to Gotham City in 1999? Take heed of new signswarning of construction ahead. Major renovations are in theworks for pop culture's most crime-ridden metropolis and itsleading avenger, Batman, that will have significantramifications for Time Warner's multibillion-dollarBat-business. But, for the first time in a decade, it's not anew Batman movie driving the change. The Warner Bros. filmfranchise is still in the shop for repairs after 1997's Batman &Robin, a movie so reviled by Batfans that its director, JoelSchumacher, concedes, ''I owe the Batman culture a real Batmanmovie.''
The agents of change at work now are TV and the comics. January16 sees the debut of Batman Beyond, a new animated offering fromThe Kids' WB produced by Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, and AlanBurnett, the creators of the Emmy award-winning Batman: TheAnimated Series. In a stylish Gotham set vaguely in the nearfuture, Bruce Wayne (voiced by Kevin Conroy) is 80 and retiredfrom crime fighting. A 17-year-old Terry McGinnis (Will Friedleof Boy Meets World) has stolen a high-tech Batsuit, sleek andblack with red retractable wings, to avenge an injustice. Waynesees in McGinnis a kindred soul and decides to train him tobecome the next Batman. Gotham needs one, with new evildoerslike the radioactive menace Blight and a familiar-looking streetgang called the Jokerz running around.
Batman's future will arrive as his present reaches a crossroadsin the comics. A yearlong story series called ''No Man's Land''will chronicle Batman's efforts to protect what's left of Gothamafter a devastating earthquake-and-plague doublewhammy. The DCComics epic will require four monthly Batman titles to tell andthe talents of Back to the Future scribe Bob Gale and mysterynovelist Greg Rucka.
''No Man's Land'' is but the prelude for a millennium-timed comicsmakeover. ''We will relaunch the entire DC line in 2000,'' saysDenny O'Neil, DC's Batman majordomo. ''In six months, my staffand I will determine where we take the entire (Batman)franchise, from the visual look to the color of the logo tocharacterization of the minor characters.'' For inspiration,O'Neil is looking to the Batman animated series, ''the mostsuccessful translation of the character into any other medium,''says O'Neil. For example, the show ''deliberately mixes timeeras -- the props are very 1930s but there's also computers -- whichgives it a timeless, mythic feel,'' says O'Neil. ''That's onevisual idea I'd like to borrow.''
Will any of this Bat-activity help rejuvenate the filmfranchise? Sources say Warner Bros. approached Dini, who willwrite for ''No Man's Land'' next year, about writing the nextBatflick. After all, the best of Batmedia does tend tocross-pollinate -- Tim Burton's 1989 goth-noir blockbuster owes adebt to Frank Miller's watershed 1986 Batman opus The DarkKnight Returns.
It's unlikely the studio will stick with the shticky tone ofBatman & Robin. But if it does, count Schumacher out. ''The onlyway I would do another Batfilm is if we went back to thebasics,'' says Schumacher. His ideal Batman movie would be basedon Miller's Batman: Year One, a prequel to The Dark KnightReturns, a no-frills account of Batman's first year of crimefighting. ''It would be nice to take the bigger-is-better conceptout of it,'' he says, ''and just go pure.''
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