“Batman Beyond” takes fans to a Gotham City decades in the future, into a neon-drenched metropolis teeming with high-tech gadgetry and lurking new threats. Bruce Wayne is now older with his crime-fighting days behind him. But when a hot-headed teenager named Terry McGinnis stumbles upon Bruce’s secret, a new era of the Dark Knight is ignited.
It is a thrilling animated series that reimagines the Batman mythos for a new generation. The series ran from 1999 to 2001 and has been a blockbuster hit. A huge part of its success also goes to its voice cast who gave a lot of weight to these animated characters.
Will Friedle Was Cast For The New Batman After More Than 250 Auditions
Kevin Conroy was cast as Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond. However, he was not the main character in the series and thus, the creators had to cast the perfect Terry McGinnis so that he does not get lost in Conroy’s charm.
Speaking to Flixist, series’ voice director Andrea Romano revealed how he had listened to about 250 auditions for the role of McGinnis before finally landing on Will Friedle. The wife of the co-creator Bruce Timms was watching Friedle’s Boy Meets World and suggested his name for the role.
“To cast anyone with less acting talent than Kevin Conroy would be uneven. So Bruce Timm’s wife had been watching Boy Meets World and said ‘there’s an actor on there that you really need to listen to’. I probably listened to at least 250 auditions for young Terry and maybe called back 50 people and Will came and I said ‘he could REALLY do it.”
Friedle was then finally cast, and Batman Beyond turned out to be a huge hit. Outside the series, Friedle was once involved in a controversy for sending support letters to Brian Peck, the former American actor who is a convicted s*x offender.
Batman Beyond Might Not Be Making A Return Anytime Soon
Ever since Batman Beyond stopped streaming in 2001, fans have been waiting for the story of the young Dark Knight to pick up again. More than two decades later, fans are still waiting to go back to the future, but there are no advancements.
The recent updates are unfortunate, as well. Butch Lukic, a supervising producer of the DC Animated Universe, recently sat down for an interview with Comicbookmovie. There, he revealed how the creators had discussed bringing the story back but there was not much excitement for a rebuild in the panel.
“Yeah. We discussed that during our roundtable conference. That was a few years ago and, at the time, no one really wanted to go down that route. If anyone should, it should, of course, be Bruce Timm. I’d love to do it, but I’ve had to do other stuff in the meantime, so…” Butch Lukic
The voices of Kevin Conroy and Will Friedle did make a huge impact in the animated series. Given how much time has passed between then and now, Friedle might actually be voicing Bruce Wayne by the time a Batman Beyond project takes place in the future. The original series can be streamed on Max.
