Earlier this year, The Batman - Part II director Matt Reeves officially announced the main cast for his long-awaited sequel on social media.
The filmmaker confirmed that Robert Pattinson (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Jeffrey Wright (Jim Gordon), Andy Serkis (Alfred Pennyworth), Colin Farrell (Oz Cobb/The Penguin), Jayme Lawson (Bella Réal) and Gil Perez-Abraham (Officer Martinez) will reprise their roles, alongside new cast members Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Charles Dance, Sebastian Koch and Brian Tyree Henry.
Reeves did not reveal the characters Gotham City's new additions will play, but we had been led to believe that Stan has been cast as Harvey Dent/Two-Face, Johansson as his wife, Gilda, and Dance as his father, Christopher.
Rumors soon circulated that this may not be the case, however, as The Hot Mic's Jeff Sneider said he'd heard that Stan is playing a different villain entirely, while Dance has been cast as the father of Johansson's character. More recently, Sneider followed up by claiming that Stan will actually play twisted serial killer Victor Zsasz, and Brian Tyree Henry will play Harvey Dent.
Now, another photo of Stan with his head shaved has convinced a lot of fans that he has indeed been cast as Zsasz. Others feel that this really doesn't prove anything, since he could also have had a buzz cut before his Two-Face prosthetics were applied.
Stan had the following to say about his "complex" character in a recent interview.
"No matter the subject or the character, whether it’s a film with Christian Mungiu or Matt Reeves, you always have to get to the heart of the truth. That means understanding what makes a person the way they are. What shapes their way of thinking? What is the world, the environment in which they grew up? That also includes their family background, their socio-economic level, as well as the city, the place and the time period in which they find themselves. You have to treat all of that with the same importance."
"And regardless of whether it’s a real person or a fictional character, you always have to do your research. So that’s what I do. And then, at Marvel as well as DC, all these characters are actually quite complex. I also think—and sometimes people don’t realise it right away—that there’s something mythological about comics. In any case, there’s always a reason, whether the character is a good guy or a bad guy, that explains why they ended up where they are. And in my opinion, finding that reason is what has the strongest impact on the interpretation."
A recent video showed Jeffrey Wright and Brian Tyree Henry's stand-ins on a bridge surrounded by GCPD vehicles and ambulances (we had heard that Henry, not Sebastian Stan, had been cast as Harvey Dent/Two-Face), which would seem to indicate that the Eternals star's character is working with Jim Gordon (he could also be playing Harvey Bullock, of course).
Rumors are circulating that Scarlett Johansson is set to portray a "serial killer obsessed with plants, who uses toxins to carry out her crimes" (surely Poison Ivy). Her main target is said to be Charles Dance's character, "the leader of a secret organization made up of the most powerful figures in the city" (the Court of Owls, no doubt).
If Johansson is playing a version of Pamela Isley, it may lend credence to another recent rumor that DC Studios is developing a live-action Poison Ivy series set in the same universe as The Batman movies and HBO's The Penguin.
After several previous delays, The Batman - Part II was scheduled to arrive in theaters on October 1, 2027, but was recently pushed back to February 18, 2028.