'Nightwing' Movie To Be Directed By Chris McKay; Character To Depict Romani Ethnicity
Chris McKay, the director of the commercial hit "The Lego Batman Movie" is going to handle another DCEU film, the "Nightwing" movie. Fans are excited to see McKay at the helm of another DC movie and are already making their fan casting known. Debates have erupted, considering Nightwing's ethnic background and which actors of color will do his character justice.
When news broke that DC will be making a "Nightwing" movie, fans became anxious. They became ecstatic, however, when it was revealed that Chris McKay, who did "The Lego Batman Movie", will be at the helm. The movie earned $258.6 million at the box office and received many positive reviews. This is putting a lot of pressure on McKay's shoulders as the director for "Nightwing". Already, fans are fighting over the actors that could play Batman's first Robin.
Collider did a poll for the main lead in the "Nightwing" movie. So far, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has the highest number of votes at 12 percent. Gordon-Levitt played Robin in Chris Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises", although the actor neither put on the suit nor used the name as a costumed crimefighter. Jensen Ackles got the second highest number of votes. The "Supernatural" actor once voiced Jason Todd (the second Robin) in the animated DC film "Batman: Under the Red Hood".
Tied in third place are Steven Yeun ("The Walking Dead"), Finn Wittrock ("American Horror Story"), Ben Barnes ("The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) and Milo Ventimiglia ("This Is Us"). Yeun is the crowd favorite, with tons of people posting images of him in Nightwing costume on social media. This ultimately brought on fan discussion about Nightwing's ethnic background in the "Nightwing" movie.
In many of his comic book issues, Richard Grayson a.k.a. Nightwing identified as half-Romani. This prompted many of the fans to call for actors of color to star in the upcoming "Nightwing" movie. According to Inverse, McKay has not yet addressed this issue about Nightwing's ethnic background, but he does show support for tweets that reestablishes Nighting's Romani (or gypsy) ethnicity.
Nightwing has a lot of fans, so the discussions understandably got more passionate. A few years ago, "Nightwing: The Series" was launched as a fan-made web series featuring Danny Shepherd as Nightwing. The series garnered a lot of positive reviews and over five million views. The "Nightwing" movie has a lot of fans to appease and impress.
There has been no news regarding the "Nightwing" movie cast or release date since it's still in the very early stages of development. McKay once expressed that the film will be groundbreaking, so many people are hoping that the movie will not suffer from whitewashing. DC fans are also hoping that the movie will not be dark, considering that Nightwing is well-known for his fun personality in contrast to Batman's grim one.