While Warner Bros. has a number of different DC Comics adaptations in the works at the moment, Nightwing is shaping up to be a hell of a thing. The project was announced in the wake of The LEGO Batman Movie, with that film’s director Chris McKay announced as the director of a live-action Nightwing movie that will finally give the Dick Grayson character his own film. McKay was an interesting choice to direct, given that his background is primarily in animation with shows like Robot Chicken and Titan Maximum, but with The LEGO Batman Movie McKay proved he can handle humor, heart, and action in equal measure, and it sounds like he has an exciting take on Nightwing lined up.

Collider’s own Christina Radish spoke with McKay at the press day for The LEGO Ninjago Movie, which he produced, and when asked about his take on Nightwing, McKay shared his enthusiasm for finally bringing Dick Grayson to the big screen:

“I’m a big comic book fan, and being able to do the story of Nightwing, to do a Dick Grayson story, which is a character that every single person in the world knows, but has never really had a lot of screentime. They make a billion Spider-Man movies and a lot of Batman movies, and they’ve tried The Hulk. When they were making the Tim Burton movies, they were always like, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll do Robin in this now. Maybe we’ll save Robin for Returns. Nope, we’ll save it for the next one.’ With Christopher Nolan, people were like, ‘Is he gonna do Robin?’ When they made Batman v Superman, they were talking about it. I’m a big fan of underdog stories, and he is one of the biggest underdog stories in comics. And he’s a character that I grew up with. I like the arc.”

That arc, of course, is something of a zero to hero:

“You always thought Robin was the dork and were like, ‘I don’t want to be like Robin. I don’t want to play with Robin. I wanna play Batman.’ But Robin was there as a window character for little kids like me to understand Batman’s world and see into Batman’s world. There’s no other character in comics that went through this real-time transition. Every other character lives in a rough version of the age that they’re in. Very few characters actually grow up in the comics and become something else, and go from being a boy to being an adult, and have their own life and become their own thing.”

As for what McKay has planned for Nightwing specifically, the film is still a ways off and casting hasn’t begun, but he hopes to focus on the practical strengths of the character rather than relying on CG effects: