From all the recent leaks -recently confirmed by a placeholder article over at Amazon- the Warner Bros 100 Years 6-pack Movie Batmen is one that has piqued the particular interest of the collector community.
It could end up being a pretty lazy repack of already produced figures (probably), or something absolutely worth it (not so likely), but at least is a nice little guessing exercise that has sprung lengthy conversations in specialized groups, and among the PAF staff as well.
Today we share our best guesses, and we’d love to hear yours as well!
The easy way
By now, we know that McFarlane loves to repack, reuse and repaint their older releases, put a new sticker or a fancy box on it, and send it out to the masses as a “must-have” brand new set. They’re as guilty of laziness, as we are of buying them without a second thought, and that’s why probably we’ll see something like that from this set.
Making a recap of all the figures that have already been made, we have a lot to pick from, and certainly, it covers most of our Bat-actors:
- Currently our only “canon” Bats, The Batman’s Robert Pattinson. Forget about the unmasked one, it will probably be the regular one with some extra paint (hopefully?)
- Michael Keaton is a no-brainer by now. We could be getting his suit from The Flash once more, or the newly revealed 1989 Batman one.
- Ben Affleck (this staffer’s fav) could be present with his tactical look from the Justice League wave, which I’m sure is what most of the community prefers over that weird The Flash figure.
- Christian Bale‘s checkbox is done too, with the great figure from The Dark Knight trilogy ready to be re-released.
- And then, my fellow PAF writers just had to remind me that Adam West is fair game too, since Batman 66 had a feature film. A scale-up from 6-inch Retro line to 7 inches from DC Multiverse is really not that difficult (we’ve seen the same done in reverse with the mini figures).
If we’re not getting duplicated actors, that still leaves us with some room to fill that box, and that’s where wishful thinking makes its entrance…
The cool way
There are still some versions of Batmen to be done by McFarlane, but according to a leak from a couple of hours ago, that could change, having as the main contender no other than…
- George Clooney, from Batman & Robin. The main reasoning after this is that he’s fresh in the minds of fans after his brief multiverse-bending cameo in The Flash movie. He also had a couple of suits in his og movie that could set him aside for a pretty different figure -Batnipples could be coming to your shelves, people. I’ll leave you to deal with that as you please-.
- Then there’s the last one left: Val Kilmer from Batman Forever. Both his panther suit (a more sculpted, darker, and nippled variation of 89/Returns) and Sonar Suit could make their way into the multipack. That would be great or awful, depending on who you ask.
We could also get a big surprise from the Toddfather, if he decided to do new figures rather than reusing the ones mentioned in the first part of the article, which opens our options to some really great variations we didn’t get before:
- At the top of my list, I’d love to see Ben Affleck done right again, which means going back to Batman v Superman with his original suit, or even the version from Knightmare!
- Batman Begins gives Bale the cooler suit IMO, and it would be great to see it done in 7in.
- And, of course, Keaton could show up with the fan-favorite Returns suit rather than the ones we’ve seen now.
- And finally, I have to mention the animated versions, because my co-staffers pointed out that a movie is a movie, and they still count even if it’s not live action!!!
With SDCC right around the corner and a McFarlane Toys panel on the schedule, that would be the perfect time to officially reveal this set, but we could be getting news even sooner at the rate of new announcements we had these past weeks. Anyway, give us your opinions and wishlists, how would you like this 6 pack to be built?