Matt Reeves’ The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as The Bat…man, continues to gear up to start filming in 2020, and two new names have been attached with one actor being more expected than the other.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Reeves’ regular collaborator Andy Serkis is in talks to reunite with his Planet of the Apes director as Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne’s faithful butler. Deadline has the bigger story that actor Colin Farrell is now in talks to play The Penguin, which is very unexpected casting, since Farrell looks absolutely nothing like previous incarnations of the Batman villain.
If Farrell takes the role, he’ll be joining Paul Dano as The Riddler and Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, and that may be the three primary baddies for Reeves’ take on the Dark Knight.
What’s interesting is that both actors have experience in the world of comic book movies, Serkis as Ulysses Klaw in Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Age of Ultron and Black Panther, Farrell playing Bullseye in the Fox Daredevil movie, opposite previous Batman, Ben Affleck. Serkis is also directing the upcoming Venom 2 sequel, which is scheduled to be released sometime in 2020, so it will be interesting to see how he might fit Alfred into his busy filmmaking schedule.
Farrell was most recently seen in Tim Burton‘s Dumbo, and he recently played a Penguin-like politician in Steve McQueen’s Widows and the baddie Percival Graves in the first Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them, though he was replaced by Johnny Depp for the sequel.
A few months back, The Beat staff picked who they thought would be good to play The Penguin, and none of us picked Farrell. Oddly, I picked Andy Serkis for The Penguin, so Reeves is definitely using some out-of-the-box casting for The Batman.
