The global coronavirus pandemic hasn’t stopped and shows no signs of ever stopping, but that doesn’t mean the movie business has to stop. Well, it did for a while, but now that things are slightly better outside of the United States, some productions are getting back to work—productions like Matt Reeves’ The Batman, which just restarted in the U.K. earlier this week after being suspended five or so months ago. Unfortunately, The Batman is already being forced to shut down again, with Deadline reporting that “one of the people on the production” tested positive for COVID-19.
The studio released a statement confirming as much, saying that the person has been isolated “in accordance with established protocols” and that “filming is temporarily paused,” but the person in question was not identified out of respect to their privacy. We don’t know how long this temporary pause will last or if it will dramatically impact the production, but Deadline says that Reeves believes he has another three months to go on the shoot. Still, The Batman is a long ways off, with Warner Bros. planning to release it in October of 2021, so it hopefully won’t be too bad. If you’re curious to see how it all looks, The Batman got a teaser back at the DC FanDome late last month.
UPDATE: According to Vanity Fair’s “highly placed sources,” the person who tested positive is none other than The Batman star Robert Pattinson. This hasn’t been confirmed and nobody has said anything official, probably because of that whole “respecting their privacy” thing mentioned above, but Vanity Fair seems pretty confident in this.