Following Scarlett Johansson's decision to drop out of Tangled (leading to another MCU star being cast as Mother Gothel) to instead star in The Batman Part II, we recently learned that Sebastian Stan will join her in Matt Reeves' Batverse.
That's two huge MCU stars now confirmed for The Batman sequel, with the Black Widow and Bucky Barnes actors likely playing a married couple, Gilda and Harvey Dent.
Talking on The Hot Mic, Jeff Sneider said Stan playing Harvey—a.k.a. Two-Face—is an "open secret," and said that he's heard from sources that "Mrs Dent would have a bigger role than Harvey Dent" in The Batman Part II.
If Reeves is planning to loosely adapt The Long Halloween (and he has said The Batman Part II will feature a villain not utilised on screen before), then it would make sense to focus on Gilda as she attempts to lighten her husband's caseload by killing Gotham City's mobsters.
Could the twist in this tale be that Harvey doesn't become Two-Face? Sneider and co-host John Rocha later speculated that we may see Johansson's Gilda as a female Two-Face, something that has played out on the page over the years.
Sneider also believes that the next major role to be cast will be The Batman Part II's older male, likely Harvey's father or Doctor Arkham.
"He’s Batman, so if he doesn’t like it, not good," Reeves previously said of Robert Pattinson's reaction to The Batman 2's script. "So, I was super excited because I thought that he really would [like it] because the things that it does for his character, for Batman, and for [Bruce Wayne] has never been done before in this way. And I had a feeling he would respond in this way, the fact that he did was incredibly encouraging."
The Batman Part II will see Reeves return as director; the filmmaker wrote the script with Mattson Tomlin, who contributed to The Batman, but ultimately wasn't credited by the WGA.
Robert Pattinson, Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, and Colin Farrell will reprise their respective roles as Batman, Jim Gordon, Alfred Pennyworth, and The Penguin. It's repeatedly been reported that Zoë Kravitz is not returning as Catwoman, no great surprise given that this sequel is set to take place just weeks—or, at most, a couple of months—after the events of The Batman.
Filming on The Batman Part II is scheduled to begin next Spring across England and Scotland. Luke Hull is the production designer, while Erik Messerschmidt recently boarded the movie as its cinematographer.
The Batman 2 is set to be released in theaters on October 1, 2027.