Written by Siran Berberian, Staff Writer
When Evan Preston was three years old, like any little kid, he was scared of a lot of things. Whether it was going to the doctor or going to a museum with scary dinosaurs, Evan’s dad got him through it by making him chant, “I’m Batman.”
Now Preston is chanting “I’m Nightwing” as he embarks on an arguably scarier journey of co-directing and starring in his own Batman production. The film is planned to be 40 action-packed minutes that Preston conceptualized during his senior year of high school.
“I began writing it as a single fight scene between the characters Nightwing and Red Hood. Once we were going to start filming, the pandemic happened, everything shut down. All of the actors I had gathered to play the characters couldn’t come out of their homes and eventually we all went off to college. The film was kind of in hiatus for a while. But, what the pandemic and lockdown allowed me to do is to write it and flesh it out creating something much more evolved than initially planned,” said Preston.
The film is centered around Nightwing and Red Hood, two of Batman’s former sidekicks and adopted sons.
“Unlike many superhero films, where the main conflict revolves around supervillains, the main conflict of my film revolves around family. The Bat-family is really complex with lots of familial issues, and I want to capitalize on the brotherhood between the first and second Robins, Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. Both of them have grown up to become Nightwing and later Red Hood so there’s a major conflict about ideologies and how to take down criminals the right way,” said Preston.
The film is 100 percent crowdsourced and privately funded with fans donating to the production to get to see their favorite Robins on screen. The film is scheduled to finish production within the next two years. In the meantime, Preston is the current president of AC Filmmakers where he continues to produce other short films with his fellow AC students.
