DC’s Fandome event was intended as a replacement for the company’s usual big presence at this year’s cancelled San Diego Comic-Con, and within minutes the company came out swinging with its first big announcement: Gotham Knights, a video game about a city without Batman, where his various proteges have to step up to defend their home.

In the action-adventure title the player will get to play as one of four prominent members of the Bat-Family:  Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl and Red Hood. Bruce Wayne is dead, and it won’t take long for the villains of Gotham City to figure out that Batman is gone too. Luckily, he’s left behind plenty for his associates to work with, including a well-equipped headquarters and of course, the ever-faithful Alfred. The mechanics lie in the vein of games like Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS4 and the Assassin’s Creed series, with plenty of stealth and brawling, though we also get to see Batgirl drive a pretty sweet bike through the streets of Gotham. 

You won’t have to wait long to see the fruits of the new production wing’s labor when the first Warner Max movies are due to arrive in 2020. The involved companies haven’t said which one will be first out of the gate.

There’s not much mystery to the strategy. Ideally, this lands HBO Max the occasional Bird Box-like hit without having to invest massive amounts of cash or risk cannibalizing Warner Bros.’ theatrical releases. The problem, of course, is that competitors won’t necessarily hold back. Netflix is believed to have spent upward of $130 million on a heist movie with Dwayne Johnson and Gal Godot, for example. Streaming giants like these may have no qualms about outspending HBO Max, in part because they don’t have a conventional movie business they want to protect.