Merry Little Batman Director Mike Roth reveals how they found the dad voice of Bruce Wayne, animation inspirations, and more in this exclusive interview.
Merry Little Batman is directed by Mike Roth, and is now available to stream on Prime Video. It is the perfect way to get in the mood for the holiday season.
This Christmas, Damian Wayne wants to be a Super Hero like his dad – the one and only Batman. When Damian is left home alone while Batman takes on Gotham’s worst Super-Villains on Christmas Eve, he stumbles upon a villainous plot to steal Christmas and leaps at the chance to save the day.
We caught up with Mike Roth to talk about how he landed on the animation style for Merry Little Batman, as well as finding the did side of Bruce Wayne. Mike also reveals how his background in animation helped him when directing this film.
Director Mike Roth Talks Merry Little Batman
© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. MERRY LITTLE BATMAN and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC. All rights reserved.
Mama’s Geeky: I really enjoyed this film. I thought it was a lot of fun. I feel like we’ve seen Batman as a father figure, but we have never seen Bruce Wayne as a dad. Can you talk about bringing that side of him out?
Mike Roth: Yeah, like you said, we’re so used to seeing Batman as his brooding presence, and for us telling a Christmas story, we wanted to tell it in the eyes of an eight year old child, which is Damian, and so everything happened organically from there. It’s like, what does Bruce look like as a dad? In full dad mode? He’s no longer focused on being Batman because he clean up crime. Now he’s taken all of that energy and he put it into raising his son. So he’s like this doting, we call him a batcopter dad. He just kind of hovers over his son way more than he should.
But it still feels like Bruce because Bruce does everything to an extreme. So he has a beard, he’s got his flannels, his dad sneakers, and it was a fun space for us to explore. For me as a director, because I have kids, I put a lot of my own dad-isms into it. One of the writers also has kids, and he’s also my age, and he put a lot of his own dad-isms in it. It was just really fun and special and cool to see Bruce like this, because like you said, you don’t get to see it much.
Mama’s Geeky: So, do you find beards more intimidating?
Mike Roth: No, but I think it’s funny that Bruce thinks it is super intimidating.
© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. MERRY LITTLE BATMAN and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © DC. All rights reserved.
Mama’s Geeky: I love this animation style. Can you talk about finding the right style to fit the story?
Mike Roth: Yeah, we didn’t want Christmas to just be a backdrop, we wanted Christmas to be infused. Like, it’s part of the DNA, it’s part of everything with the story. So we wanted to portray that not just with the story, but also with the visual story, the visual style storytelling as well. We landed on this idea of something that felt very illustrative, and something that felt like a picture book. Then landed on Ron Searle and his sketches and his design sensibility, because it’s both kind of rough and crude, but it’s also very funny, which fits really well with Christmas and Batman. Then we also, from there, we landed on a monochromatic color style, because we want it to feel like a picture book.
Mama’s Geeky: You’ve had a lot of background in animation. Regular Show is one of my favorite shows ever. Did you feel that any of that helped you in directing Merry Little Batman?
Mike Roth: One hundred percent. All those experiences form who I am as an artist and form lots of decisions that I make. I worked on Rugrats years ago, and one of the things that was really fun about Rugrats was a similar idea in that the world is through these babies perspective, and what does that look like? We didn’t go so much for fourth force perspective in that, but that idea and having worked on that project definitely opened up some doors for me and the thought process of how do we build this world that we’re seeing it through the eyes of an eight year old. He’s this tiny little kid in this huge world, and everything feels really advanced and expansive. Everything comes from something.
Mama’s Geeky: I’m very excited for the Bat-Family series, as well.
Mike Roth: Yes!
Merry Little Batman is Streaming Globally on Prime Video!
NEXT: Luke Wilson Talks Merry Little Batman & Bearded Bruce Wayne
About Merry Little Batman
This Christmas, Damian Wayne wants to be a Super Hero like his dad—the one and only Batman. When Damian is left home alone while Batman takes on Gotham’s worst Super-Villains on Christmas Eve, he stumbles upon a villainous plot to steal Christmas and leaps at the chance to save the day.
Merry Little Batman is produced by Warner Bros. Animation and based on characters from DC, featuring the voices of Yonas Kibreab, Luke Wilson, James Cromwell, and David Hornsby, and is directed by Mike Roth (Regular Show) from a screenplay by Morgan Evans (Teen Titans Go!) and Jase Ricci (Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham). Roth also serves as executive producer, alongside Sam Register (Looney Tunes Cartoons).
Merry Little Batman is Streaming Globally on Prime Video!
Tessa Smith is a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer-approved Film and TV Critic. She is also a Freelance Writer. Tessa has been in the Entertainment writing business for ten years and is a member of several Critics Associations including the Critics Choice Association and the Greater Western New York Film Critics Association.