The Batman: Jim Gordon Star Jeffrey Wright Teases the New Bat Signal

The Batman star Jeffrey Wright sent up what could be the Bat Signal shortly after director Matt Reeves revealed the first look at star Robert Pattinson suited up as the Dark Knight. Wright was the second actor announced to have entered into discussions in September — behind only Pattinson — and the later reported casting of Alex Ferns as Gotham City Commissioner Pete Savage, if accurate, indicates Wright’s Gordon is a lower-ranking cop when Pattinson’s caped crusader begins his investigation into a city-wide conspiracy involving multiple costumed criminals as suspects. Newest reported plot details say The Batman explores Bruce Wayne’s second year of crime-fighting in the city he’s vowed to protect.

Following Reeves’ first released camera test showing Pattinson’s leather-clad Batman, Wright tweeted a brightly lit spotlight likely signaling the eventual unveiling of the Bat Signal, traditionally used by Commissioner Gordon to alert Batman of trouble in the DC comic books and other media.

One of the Bat-foes that could cause the signal to ignite is Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. the Penguin, played by Colin Farrell, who says Reeves penned a “really beautiful, dark, moving script.” Despite centering on a fresher Batman and involving a rogues gallery of villains, Reeves has denied The Batman is based on origin story Year One or any other specific comic book. In Year One, Batman is a rookie crime-fighter and Gordon is a newly-transferred police lieutenant.

“Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One,” Reeves said during a Television Critics Association panel in 2018. “It’s just exciting to be focused very specifically on a tale that is defining for him and very personal to him. Obviously we’re not doing an origin tale or anything like that. We’re doing a story that is definitively Batman though, and trying to tell a story that’s emotional and yet is really about him being the world’s greatest detective and all the things that for me, since I was a kid, made me love Batman.”

Instead of borrowing from any one tale, Reeves said his story — a “point of view noir-driven, definitive Batman story” — will take audiences out into the crime-infested world of Gotham City.

“I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favorite comics. Those all inform by osmosis,” he said. “There’s no continuation of the [Christopher] Nolan films. It’s very much trying to find a way to do this as something that for me is going to be definitively Batman and new and cool.”

Also starring Zoë Kravitz, Paul Dano, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Jayme Lawson, and Andy Serkis, The Batman opens June 25, 2021.