Last summer Warner Bros. temporarily banished their DC Comics superhero film project Justice League Dark to the bleakest depths of Development Hell following the departure of Hellboy and Pacific Rim director Guillermo del Toro. The project would have brought together the DC Universe’s strangest supernatural heroes including Swamp Thing, the Demon, Zatanna, and John Constantine, but was not intended to be part of the studio’s plans for an extended cinematic universe based on other popular DC characters.

Without del Toro at the helm, the feature looked as good as finished. But although Justice League Dark might never exist as a live-action film, it looks as if we will soon be seeing it in animated form.

Warner Bros. and DC Comics announced on Friday that they will be producing three new direct-to-video animated features featuring Batman for release in 2016. With Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice poised to explode onto the big screen next March, there will no doubt be another resurgence of interest in Dark Knight-related merchandise.

Among the three new animated movies coming our way next year will be an adaptation of what is arguably one of the greatest stories of the Caped Crusader ever told, Batman: The Killing Joke.

This week’s edition of The Digital Wire is positively epic and packed to capacity with major new release announcements. We’ve got some horror, some drama, some more horror, even more horror, action, comic book animation, a 3D documentary starring one of the world’s highest-grossing filmmakers, and finally….horror. Well we are getting pretty close to Halloween and all.

Below you’ll find info on several future home video releases complete with technical specs, release dates, and links to pre-order at Amazon. We would greatly appreciate it if you use those links to order because a small percentage of each order helps keep this website running at max power. The cover art for certain titles has yet to be finalized.

Hot on the heels of the release of the DC Animated feature The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 comes the trailer for the next in the line of DC/Warner Brothers Animated features. The next film is titled Superman: Unbound and is based on the 2008 Superman: Braniac arc written by Geoff Johns with art by Gary Frank that was published in Action Comics. The story features Superman fighting against Braniac with the future of the bottle city of Kandor and a few thousand Kryptonians hanging in the balance.

The feature brings us a new voice for Superman in the person of Matt Bomer (White Collar), with John Noble (Fringe, Lord of the Rings) as Braniac. This looks to be another great entry in DC/WB’s animated line, and it makes me wonder if they be adapting the rest of Johns’ Superman run at some point. Check out the trailer below.

Attendees at the Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2 panel at the IGN Theater in the Jacob Javits Convention Center at the New York Comic-Con on Saturday got a sneak peek at the epic animated conclusion to Frank Miller’s story featuring Gotham City’s Caped Crusader.

Moderator Gary Miereanu introduced long-time DC Animated producers: multiple Emmy Award winner, voice and dialogue director Andrea Romano, along with as called by Miereanu, “the architect of superhero animation” Bruce Timm. To the crowd’s delight, intros were immediately followed by a trailer of the upcoming sequel to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1.

Another clip was shown which featured the Joker on a talk show, in which the host was voiced by Conan O’Brien. At first the footage was campy, then turned rather sinister as the Joker manifested his controlled viciousness.