The Killing Joke to premiere at San Diego Comic-Con

Batman: The Killing Joke, the highly-anticipated upcoming animated film from DC, will premiere at San Diego Comic-Con in July, executive producer Bruce Timm has revealed.

An adaptation of the 1988 graphic novel from Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, Timm also revealed that they've had to add some additional meat to the original story in order to make it a feature-length film.

"The one big difference about it, as opposed to those other projects [The Dark Knight Returns Part 1 & Part 2], is The Killing Joke… the source material is really not long enough to make an entire feature film out of," Tmim said at Wizard World Comic-Con New Orleans. "So we actually  had to add a lot more story to it. Which is tricky. But I think we came up with a really good solution on how that worked."

A few months ago, director James Tucker revealed that DC had given him clearance to make The Killing Joke R-rated, much to fans' delight. Knowing that DC is willing to risk isolating the audience with an R-Rating is a good sign that they’re looking to be faithful to the controversial source material. The Killing Joke is still the closest thing there is to an official Joker origin story, although recently leaked images from the upcoming movie Suicide Squad also hint at Joker’s origins.

As a reminder, San Diego Comic-Con runs from July 21-24.