Dan Fogler is stepping out of the Wizarding World and into the Batcave.
The Fantastic Beasts actor will play longtime Batman executive producer Michael Uslan in a stage play based on Uslan’s 2011 memoir, The Boy Who Loved Batman. Nederlander Worldwide Productions is the lead producer.
The memoir, published in 2019, told his origin story as a comic book geek who went from teaching a comic book class as a junior at Indiana University in Bloomington to working at DC during summers. He then went on to law school and subsequently landed a job at United Artists. Next, he had a front seat to the rise of early comic book movies, specifically those featuring the Caped Crusader.
Uslan has been credited on every Batman-related movie — including Batman-adjacent films like Joker and Justice League — since Tim Burton’s 1989 original. It all dates back to a 1979 deal he and former MGM executive Benjamin Melniker made to buy the film rights to Batman, back when Warner Bros. did not see the value of the property.
“Dan’s exceptional talent, comic timing, impressive stage presence and deep, enthusiastic roots as an unabashed fanboy make him the perfect actor to take on the obviously challenging, complicated role of Michael Uslan,” Uslan quips. “From the first moment he was given the script, Dan has been spot-on in his approach to the material, and I could not be happier that he agreed to join us on this journey.”
The play will run from Oct. 1-Nov. 10 at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, in Tampa, Florida. The hope is eventually to get it to Broadway.
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“I can’t wait to be back on stage again, and Batman and comic books are two of my favorite subjects,” Fogler says. “I was 12 in 1989 and seeing Batman on screen — how he was meant to be in all his dark brooding glory — was a life-changing experience. It was electric, and I can’t wait to tell the story of how it all came to be.”
Fogler has Broadway experience, playing William Barfée in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, a role that earned him a Tony in 2005.
“The play The Boy Who Loved Batman has something for everyone — it’s on the pulse of the pop culture zeitgeist,” Fogler adds. “You will laugh and you will cry and you’ll walk away loving Batman even more than you do now.”
