Frozen star Josh Gad continues to hint at — or campaign for — the role of Batman villain the Penguin, rumored to make his DCEU debut in Matt Reeves’ The Batman or Suicide Squad spinoff Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn).
Good Knight pic.twitter.com/5qu6HOn1qL
— Josh Gad (@joshgad) January 14, 2019
Gad on Sunday tweeted “Good Knight,” accompanied by a GIF of one of the Dark Knight’s longest-running foes, famously portrayed by Burgess Meredith in the Adam West-led Batman television show.
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The tweet came the day We Got This Covered claimed Oswald Cobblepott’s top hat-sporting crime lord will serve as “one of the main antagonists” in The Batman, and that writer-director Reeves “specifically requested” Penguin be withheld from use in Birds of Prey, where Penguin was once rumored to be involved.
Gad has long lobbied-slash-hinted at the role, even visiting the DC Comics offices and posing with a Batman comic featuring the Penguin.
“[I’m] just having some fun,” Gad told MTV News in 2017 when pressed about his frequent hint-dropping.
“Just having some fun! Really, I promise! There’s nothing to… there’s nothing there. The Internet just goes wild. I’m just having some fun putting things out there.”
Reeves was reported to have finished penning his script as recently as the end of December ahead of The Batman‘s planned 2019 shooting start.
“I’ve talked about making it a very point of view noir-driven definitive Batman story in which he is investigating a particular case and that takes us out into the world of Gotham,” the War for the Planet of the Apes filmmaker said last summer during the Television Critics Association press tour.
“I went on a deep dive again revisiting all my favorite comics. Those all inform by osmosis. 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.”
The Hollywood Reporter wrote in June The Batman is centered around a younger caped crusader — effectively precluding star Ben Affleck from filling the starring role as a fresher Bruce Wayne — while Reeves has since said his film is not based on origin tale Year One or any particular comic book.
“Year One is one of the many comic books that I love. We are definitely not doing Year One,” Reeves said.
“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.”
Warner Bros. has yet to announce a release date for The Batman.
