From where I’m sitting, The Batman is shaping up to be the cinematic equivalent of comic books such as The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. The reason I’m saying that is because all signs point toward Matt Reeves’ upcoming blockbuster containing more villains than we’re used to seeing in a single film headlined by the Caped Crusader.
To briefly bring you up to speed, it was recently reported that Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman and Firefly will be there to greet us upon our next trip to Gotham City. In addition to that fearsome foursome, it’s also worth pointing out how we broke the news of Two-Face joining them earlier this month.
Now, the folks at Discussing Film are also saying that Two-Face is indeed showing up, with the studio seeking “a male in their 30-40s.” Not only that, but he’s bringing the Mad Hatter with him, as the casting department are on the hunt for “a male in their 40-50s” when it comes to Jervis Tetch.
Independent of this report, the routinely solid Batman on Film published their own piece just this morning saying the exact same thing. There’s just one catch, however: some villains, namely Two-Face and Mad Hatter, could be removed during subsequent rewrites of the screenplay.
Call me crazy, but if everybody with an inside source regarding this matter are reporting the same villains showing up in the picture, then odds are there’s weight to this information. And though four out of six of these rogues – Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman and Two-Face – have prior history in the film franchise, those iterations weren’t entirely accurate to their comic book counterparts, so here’s a chance to honor the source material more than ever before. Firefly and Mad Hatter, meanwhile, are new territory.
The Batman arrives in theaters on June 25th, 2021.