Jensen Ackles has been pretty busy ever since the CW show Supernatural ended late last year. Ackles played Dean Winchester, a monster hunter alongside his brother Sam (played by Jared Padalecki), for the entirety of the show’s fifteen-year run. But since the finale in November, Ackles has been cast in other projects such as playing Soldier Boy in the upcoming third season of Amazon’s superhero show The Boys. However, it was just announced that Ackles has been cast in yet another superhero project, as the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne in an animated adaptation of Batman: The Long Halloween.
Batman: The Long Halloween is a 13-part limited series published in 1996. Written by Jeph Loeb with art by Tim Sale, the story follows Batman as he tracks down a vicious murderer known as Holiday who kills his victims on important holidays. Each issue, released monthly, focused on a specific holiday of the month in which it was released, like Halloween in October, Thanksgiving in November, etc. The series also featured many of Batman’s more iconic arch-nemeses, such as Two-Face, Joker, the Riddler, and Poison Ivy.
This isn’t the first Batman-related project Ackles has been attached to. He also voiced Jason Todd/Red Hood in the 2010 animated film, Batman: Under the Red Hood, a role for which Ackles garnered critical acclaim.
Because of the scope of the project, the animated adaptation of Batman: The Long Halloween will be broken up into two parts, similar to how DC handled the adaptation of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The Long Halloween will also star Naya Rivera as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Titus Welliver as Carmine Falcone, Josh Duhamel as Harvey Dent, and Troy Baker as the Joker, as well as a host of other talented voice actors.
Batman: The Long Halloween Part 1 is expected to be released in the spring or summer of this year.
