In a surprising turn of events, Colin Farrell - who plays Oz Cobb/The Penguin in Matt Reeves' BatVerse - is in talks to play the lead role in DC Studios and director Luca Guadagnino's Sgt. Rock movie.
Though Farrell has entered negotiations to play Sgt. Franklin John Rock in the WWII-set film. Deadline believes that scheduling "has to be balanced with his busy fall which includes the second season of AppleTV+’s Sugar and Edward Berger’s movie The Ballad of a Small Player."
Daniel Craig was said to be in talks to play the title role (though DC Studios co-head Peter Safran insists this was not the case), but reportedly passed due to a scheduling conflict and is now circling Greta Gerwig's Narnia movie. There have also been rumors that Mike Faist - who worked with Guadagnino on Challengers - waqs being considered for the part.
Guadagnino is set to re-team with his Challengers and Queer collaborator Justin Kuritzkes, who is penning the script. The project is said to be a "period piece set during World War II."
We've been hearing whispers of a potential Sgt. Rock movie for quite a while, and attempts to get a film based on the character off the ground go all the way back to the late '80s, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was briefly attached to play the lead. Bruce Willis was also said to be in talks to play Rock in a movie helmed by Guy Ritchie back in 2008.
Producer Joel Silver revealed that this take on the properly was going to be set in the future during a 2010 interview with LA Times.
"It [takes place] a little bit in the future. As a war movie, it's not going to be 'where it's been,' it's going to be 'where it's going.' We didn't want to do Iraq, we didn't want to do a contemporary war. We wanted to do a sort of futuristic war. It's pretty strong. Chad St. John wrote the script and we've got Francis Lawrence involved in developing it with us. It's not a 'go' movie yet but I'm feeling good about it."
Sgt. Franklin Rock was created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert, debuting in the pages of Our Army at War #83 in 1959. Rock was a member of the Easy Company, a unit that fought in the European Theatre during World War II and consisted of a disparate group of individuals who managed to participate in every major action in the European war.
Farrell will return as the villainous Gotham City crime boss Matt Reeves' The Batman sequel, and possibly a second season of The Penguin.