It’s official. The Absolute Batman adaptation that has been rumored is real, and it landed at Annecy rather than at San Diego Comic-Con.
DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation used their first joint presentation at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on Thursday to confirm that Scott Snyder’s Absolute Batman is becoming an adult animated series, with Snyder himself running the show.
And to clear up the rumor that has been circulating: yes, a DC Studios anime is happening too. It just isn’t Absolute Batman.
Absolute Batman Heads To Screen
The reveal came on stage from DC Studios co-chairman and co-CEO Peter Safran and Warner Bros. Animation president Sam Register, as the studios shared first-look art and creative details for their next wave of DC animation.
Snyder, who writes the comic, will serve as executive producer and showrunner. Nick Dragotta, the book’s artist, will produce. The project is being built as adult animation, in keeping with the tone of the source material.
“Can’t even begin to tell you guys how excited Nick and I are to be working on this – so grateful to Warner Brothers animation and DC Studios!” Snyder posted on X.
It keeps the comic’s core intact: a working-class Bruce Wayne with no mansion, no fortune, and no butler, waging an impossible war on a corrupt Gotham.
There is no network attached yet, and no release date or window has been given.
The Anime Is Joker, Not Batman
This is the part that matters for anyone who followed the pre-Comic-Con speculation.
As we covered heading into SDCC, the loudest rumor pegged Absolute Batman specifically as an anime, fueled by Dragotta’s on-record wish for a Studio Trigger version.
The reality is more precise. Absolute Batman is an animated series produced in-house by Warner Bros. Animation and DC Studios, not an anime, with no Japanese studio involved.
The anime is a separate book. DC Studios used the same event to greenlight its first-ever anime series, Joker: Laugh Riot, made with Japan’s SOLA Entertainment (note: Suicide Squad Isekai was a previous DC anime from WB Japan, and Batman Ninja was released in 2018).
Joker: Laugh Riot is directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, whose credits include the acclaimed feature ChaO and Warner’s anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. DC animation veteran Jim Krieg, who worked on Watchmen and Crisis on Infinite Earths, is executive producing.
The hook flips the usual setup: after Batman is murdered, the Joker tears through Gotham’s underworld hunting the killer, and the deeper he goes, the more he drifts from villain toward vigilante, until he has to face the fact that without Batman, he doesn’t know who he is.
So the short version is this. The anime everyone was talking about is real. It just stars the Joker, not Bruce Wayne.
The Numbers Behind The Greenlight
The sales figures DC put behind the announcement explain why this was always coming.
Absolute Batman has now sold more than six million copies, and the first issue has run all the way to an eleventh printing.
Every title in the Absolute line ranks among the ten best-selling comics of 2025. According to the trades, the line has helped DC overtake Marvel in market share for the first time this century.
That lines up with what we have reported all year.
DC didn’t just beat Marvel in 2025, it buried it, with Absolute Batman issues stacking the year-end charts. Snyder has plans to push the comic past 50 issues with the line’s first event arriving in November.
And demand has run so hot that a single variant blew up into the #19 “DropGate” controversy, with copies auctioned for as much as $1,500.
When a book sells like that, an adaptation stops being a question of if.
A Deeper DC Animation Push
Absolute Batman and Joker: Laugh Riot were not the only reveals.
The studios also have an untitled kids series in development centered on Krypto, from SpongeBob and Chowder veteran C.H. Greenblatt. The super-powered dog has been everywhere lately, with a role in last year’s Superman and a key part in Supergirl.
Those greenlights sat alongside a broad slate that includes a second season of Batman: Caped Crusader returning to Prime Video on July 31, an upcoming Batman: Knightfall, Creature Commandos, Tom King’s Mister Miracle, the Vertigo series Get Jiro hitting Adult Swim this fall, and a tenth season of Teen Titans Go, now DC’s longest-running show.
