More footage has surfaced from the Nolan-verse Batman game that never was. Game archivist MrTalida pulled files from deleted sectors of an old hard drive, uploading nearly a gigabyte of dev materials from Project Apollo, the open-world Batman title that Monolith Productions worked on between 2009 and 2010. The recovered cache includes gameplay clips, design documents, concept art, and production schedules that show how the project evolved over its short lifespan.
Lastly, here's a series of videos showing the progress Monolith had made on the tumbler batmobile sections. AFAIK, the previous leak didn't show any tumbler footage, so this may be our first peek.You can see how the feature progressed from Oct 2009, to Nov 2009, to Jan 2010.Enjoy the files!9/9
The standout reveal is footage of the Tumbler, Batman’s tank-like Batmobile from Nolan’s films, tearing through a train yard while evading police and smashing through explosive barrels. This marks the first time the vehicle has been seen in action from the canceled game, with clips showing progression from October 2009 through January 2010. The rest of the footage demonstrates Monolith’s work on a dynamic audio system that would shift music based on gameplay situations, using Hans Zimmer’s Dark Knight score as a placeholder. Players would have been able to traverse an open-world Gotham by gliding with the grappling hook or driving the Tumbler.
Project Apollo was in development for roughly 18 months before Warner Bros killed it. The game was intended to exist within Nolan’s Batman universe, and WB made it clear the project could only continue if Nolan signed off on it. He reportedly had no interest, likely due to bad experiences with previous tie-in games for his films.
If you want to check out more gameplay images and videos, check out this post on X from April 2024 by @Dageekydude.
Rather than rework it as a standalone Batman game, Monolith pivoted to making Lord of the Rings titles. That shift brought us the legendary Nemesis System in Shadow of Mordor, a mechanic born from Project Apollo’s idea of having procedurally generated thugs remember and return stronger after encounters with Batman. Pretty cool stuff. Of course, Monolith was unceremoniously shut down by Warner Bros in February 2025, taking the patented Nemesis System to the grave with it.
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