In April, Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment announced plans to launch a DC-branded, direct-to-consumer digital service in 2018. The platform will feature two series intially — first, a revival of the celebrated cartoon series Young Justice: Outsiders, and second, the live-action Titans, which follows a group of young soon-to-be-superheroes recruited from across the DC universe.
Over the past few months, DC has been filling out the cast for Titans, tabbing Anna Diop (24: Legacy) as Starfire and Teagan Croft (The Osiris Child) as Raven. On Thursday, Deadline reported the newest official addition to the team: Australian Brenton Thwaites (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), 28, who will take the role of Dick Grayson — better known as Robin, the team’s leader.
Thwaites and Croft have both appeared in the long-running Australian soap opera Home and Away, but Thwaites was on the show between 2011 and 2012, while Croft’s run was in 2016.
Like most superheroes, Grayson sports a tragic background story — his parents were circus acrobats murdered by a mob boss in the midst of an extortion scheme (though this varies, depending which comic you have read) — after which he was adopted by Bruce Wayne and groomed into a sidekick. In many timelines, the Grayson character eventually splits from Batman to take on the guise of Nightwing.
We don’t yet know whether Cyborg and Beast Boy will fill out the Titans roster, as they did in each of the popular animated series based on the group, which aired on Cartoon Network.
The series is produced by WB-DC bigwig Greg Berlanti, alongside Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns, Sarah Schechter, and Warner Bros. TV. In combination, the team has experience writing for several popular superhero shows, including The Flash, Arrow, and Supergirl, among others. Titans was originally ordered as a pilot in 2014 by TNT; at the time, Goldsman and Marc Haimes (Kubo and the Two Strings) were on board as lead writers. Due to some internal upheaval at TNT, the project was scrapped before its Warner Bros. revival.
Warner Bros. upcoming over-the-top (OTT) platform will be the second such service launched by the company, following the April debut of Boomerang, a $5 per month service for cartoon series like Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo.
