Bruce Timm Confirms Catwoman Short with BATMAN: YEAR ONE Film; Hears Positive Buzz About GREEN LANTERN

Exclusive: DC's long-time exec producer filled me in on the future of DC Animation including Batman: Year One, the cancellation of their Animated Shorts and the possible appearance of other fan-favorite characters in future projects.

Batman: Year One -- otherwise known simply as Year One -- is a 1987 comic book story arc written by Frank Miller and illustrated by David Mazzucchelli. The story recounts the beginning of Bruce Wayne's career as Batman and Jim Gordon's with the Gotham City Police Department. Bruce returns home from training abroad in martial arts, manhunting, and science for the past 12 years, while Gordon moves to Gotham with his wife, Barbara, after a transfer from Chicago. Both are swiftly acquainted with the corruption and violence of Gotham City, and vow to make a difference in their own way.

DC Entertainment has chosen Batman: Year One as their next direct-to-video animated film after Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, with All-Star Superman's Sam Liu and Lauren Montgomery sharing the director's chair. I caught up with Executive Producer extraordinaire Bruce Timm -- who has been one of the driving forces behind most of DC's small screen adaptations over the past several decades -- at the Los Angeles premiere of All-Star Superman, and he shared a few details about DC's upcoming projects.

The latest batch of animated films from DC Entertainment and Warner Premiere, including Superman/Batman: Apocalypse and Batman: Under the Red Hood, were accompanied by short films featuring several fan-favorite characters such as Green Arrow, Jonah Hex and The Spectre. Unfortunately, it appears this practice will not continue. "We probably won't be doing anymore of the DC Showcase type shorts. The early indication that the [Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam] compilation that we did didn't sell really well enough to just cycle anymore of them.

"There is going to be one more short featurette, the Catwoman short, that's going to be on the Batman: Year One film, but then beyond that I really don't know."

Timm went on to say that he will hopefully get the chance to collaborate with Conan O'Brien on another character for his show, and help push another appearance of "The Flaming C" through DC Animation. He also stated that he hopes to bring back voice actors that participated in the popular animated series Justice League for future film or television projects, and coyly said it is possible fans will see The Flash or Martian Manhunter spotlighted in future animated films.

Regarding the upcoming Green Lantern live-action film, with Ryan Reynolds in the title role, Tim thinks it will be a great launching point to make the character a mainstream hero, "I've liked what I've seen [of Green Lantern] so far and all the buzz I hear about it internally sounds great. Everyone's hoping it will be a great movie and be a big hit and we'll follow it right after that and hopefully we'll get him to being a big media player. That's the plan anyways."

No release date has been set for Batman: Year One; while All Star Superman, featuring the voice talents of James Denton and Christina Hendricks, hits stores this week. Green Lantern: Emerald Knights will be released on June 7th, 2011 and the live-action Green Lantern film is scheduled for theatrical release on June 17th, 2011.