In the nearly two years since Wan and the crew initially wrapped filming, WarnerMedia was sold to Discovery, resulting in the new media conglomerate that is Warner Bros. Discovery led by David Zaslav. The executive has made sweeping changes to the company in that time, scrapping various DC projects and, most importantly, forming DC Studios under the leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran. They are now tasked with rebooting the DC Universe beginning in 2025 with “Superman: Legacy.” As a result, “Lost Kingdom” now serves as the final DCEU movie, with the main characters set to be recast in the future.
That, coupled with an ever-evolving release calendar in the aftermath of the pandemic, resulted in significant reshoots and retooling during post-production. Wan, for his part, did confirm that he shot some Batman scenes for the film, even if they didn’t wind up in the final cut. These scenes were “just to have something in the bank in case we needed to explain time continuity if we came out first,” Wan explained back in October.
To that end, the movie’s release date shifted several times, and it was originally supposed to come out before “The Flash” — not after. If it had come out before “The Flash” (which features both Affleck and Keaton in sizable roles), other scenes might have been needed to explain how it fit in with what was coming later. But since nothing else is coming later, there’s no real reason to worry about any continuity issues. This is, effectively, the end of the line for this iteration of the franchise. So why put Batman in the movie if he didn’t necessarily need to be in the movie? At this point, it might have just felt shoehorned in.