Jeffrey Wright Will Play Batman In HBO Max's New...Comedy Podcast?

The Caped Crusader? Nah, more like the Caped Comedian, star of a new Batman podcast being launched by HBO Max. No, this isn't a joke, but a real thing being developed by the WarnerMedia streaming platform, set to star Jeffrey Wright as the Dark Knight himself.

Wright is trading the signature Commissioner Gordon mustache for a cowl in Batman: The Audio Adventures, a new HBO Max podcast that offers a "comedic take on the Dark Knight," according to The Hollywood Reporter. Wright, who is set to make his debut as Commissioner Gordon in Matt Reeves' 2022 film The Batman, will lend his voice to play Batman.

While it's a little funny that a member of an ongoing Batman franchise is set to star as Batman in a comedy podcast, Wright isn't the first name you'd think of as a star of a comedy series. But the rest of the cast, which includes a fair share of former and current Saturday Night Live as well as well-regarded comedians, more than signal that this is a comedy. The cast of Batman: The Audio Adventures includes Chris Parnell, Melissa Villaseñor, Seth Meyers, Brent Spiner, John Leguizamo, Ike Barinholtz, Bobby Moynihan, Kenan Thompson, Rosario Dawson, Jason Sudeikis, Alan Tudyk, Heidi Gardner, Brooke Shields, Paul Scheer, Tim Meadows, Fred Armisen, Ray Wise, Ben Rodgers, Katie Rich, Pete Schultz, Paula Pell, and Toby Huss

Last but not least in the voice cast is Dennis McNicholas, a longtime writer at SNL who penned and directed the multi-episode podcast series, which hails from Warner Bros.'s Blue Ribbon Content division.

Audio Adventures is separate from DC's multi-year deal with Spotify to create podcasts based on its characters, which include titles like Batman Unburied, which features David Goyer as creator and executive producer. However, Audio Adventures does also seem unrelated from the slew of spin-off titles that Warner Bros. is developing for HBO Max based on their superhero properties, including The Suicide Squad spin-off Peacemaker, and a Gotham police procedural spin-off from The Batman which could ostensibly feature Wright as well.

But Wright, who has done some superhero voice work before — voicing The Watcher in Marvel's upcoming animated series, What If...? — likely won't face any issues of confusion if he appears in multiple Batman projects as different characters across HBO Max, as his role in Audio Adventures is purely, well, audio.

McNicholas produced Audio Adventures with Angela Petrella (Stone Quackers, Golan the Insatiable). Jon Berg, the former Warner executive-turned-producer who worked on Justice League, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman, is the executive producer. Batman: The Audio Adventures is due to hit HBO Max sometime in 2021.