Jeffrey Wright Comments on Batman Director's Batman Day Tweet
On Monday it was reported that Westworld star Jeffrey Wright is in negotiations to play [...]
On Monday it was reported that Westworld star Jeffrey Wright is in negotiations to play Commissioner Jim Gordon in director Matt Reeves' upcoming The Batman. While Wright's casting in the iconic role has not yet been confirmed -- Deadline in particular notes that Wright is in early talks to take on the role, Wright is already getting in on the Batman chatter with the actor commenting on Reeves' Twitter post celebrating Batman Day last Saturday.
In his own post on Monday, Wright retweeted Reeves' Batman Day photo from London with a single monocle face emoji as if investigating Reeves' post. You can check it out for yourself below.
— Jeffrey Wright (@jfreewright) September 23, 2019
The emoji response to Reeves' post itself doesn't really confirm (or deny) anything regarding the day's big Batman news, though fans took the tweet as confirmation enough and flooded the replies with messages welcoming Wright to the DC Universe, including quite a few Batman-related GIFs.
Wright would be the second announced actor to join The Batman following the announcement earlier this year that Robert Pattinson will be playing the titular hero. The role of Commissioner Gordon has in recent years been played by Gary Oldman in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy and most recently by J.K. Simmons in Zack Snyder's Justice League. Interestingly, it sounds like there was another actor in line for the role in Reeves' The Batman -- specifically Mahershala Ali. Collider's Jeff Sneider suggested earlier this month that Ali was Reeves' first choice, but that the Blade reboot got in the way.
In addition to news about Wright being in talks to join The Batman, it was announced on Monday that Jonah Hill is also in talks to join the film as an undisclosed villain -- potentially as the Penguin or the Riddler, with Sneider noting that while there are several villains in the film, the Riddler would be the first to be cast.
"The Batman will explore a detective case — when people start dying in strange ways, Batman must go deep into the dark world of Gotham to find clues and solve the mystery/conspiracy connected to Gotham City's history and criminals," reads reported plot details that surfaced earlier this month. "In the film, all of Batman's Rogues Gallery are already out there and active, similar to the comics and animated shows/movies. The film will have multiple villains, as they are all suspects."
The Batman is expected to hit theaters June 25, 2021