DC‘s first original story by Webtoon, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures is set to get the live-action treatment — and it is hella inclusive.
Jonathan Bentley is set to star as Bruce Wayne — which is great news. However, the casting of Yoshi Sudarso (Buffalo Boys, Bullet Train) as Dick Grayson/Nightwing is the first actor of Asian descent to play the character which has been historically portrayed as white. In addition, Peter Sudarso (Supergirl, The Paper Tigers) will play Tim Drake/Red Robin, the second actor to play the character in a live action iteration — and his character is also traditionally white. It’s inclusivity and we love to see it.
The cast also includes Gemma Nguyen (Phantom Breaker) as Cassandra Cain/Orphan, D-Shaunt “Fik-Shun” Stegall (So You Think You Can Dance) as Duke Thomas/Signal, Lisa Foiles (All That, Malcolm in the Middle), as Barbara Gordon/Oracle, Tim Neff (Echo 3, Outpost) as Jason Todd/Red Hood, Meghan Camarena (Power Rangers Hyperforce, Video Game High School) as Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, Carter Rockwood as Damian Wayne/Robin, and Marcus Weiss (Scrubs, Le Rêve) as Alfred Pennyworth.
The live action adaptation from the Webtoon comic, which drew more than 400,000 readers in the first two days alone. In the Webtoon comic, it follows Bruce Wayne and the challenges he faces as a father figure to “an endless supply of adopted, fostered and biological superhero children”.
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures will be directed by Ismahawk’s Danny Shepherd and director of photography helmed by Ismahawk’s Jeremy Le. The three-part miniseries will be released mid-October on Ismahawk’s YouTube channel.
The inclusion of the Sudarsos in the series as iconic DC characters who are traditionally played by white actors continues DC’s effort of representation. In HBO Max’s Titans, bi-racial actor Jay Lycurgo plays Tim Drake while it was recently announced that AJ Hudson would star in the Warner Bros. Animation series Batwheels. He will voice the first Black character to don the Robin “R” in the pages of the DC comics.
