Following the commercial and critical drubbing of Joker: Folie à Deux, many superhero fans were left wondering if the sequel’s failure would impact Barry Keoghan’s return as the same character in The Batman franchise.
The Irish Oscar-nominee had a cameo as the iconic villain in 2022’s blockbuster The Batman, setting up expectations that he’d be back as the character again.
Based on a reported new “scoop” from the popular Marvelvison podcast, this will likely still be the case.
According to the show, Warner Bros. has apparently been chatting with Keoghan about his return to The Batman franchise.
While it is unclear if the actor will appear in The Batman 2, it is Marvelvision’s understanding that he will be the main villain of The Batman 3.
The podcast also reports that the reason for this is that there are plans to do a “Joker-oriented” series that connects The Batman 2 and 3, similar to how the currently ongoing show The Penguin will connect The Batman and The Batman 2.
Marvelvision was quick to point out that they don’t know if this would be a Joker series in which the villain is the main character or a series in which The Joker appears.
This would line up with recent comments by The Batman’s director Matt Reeves that he is already talking to Warner Bros. about more series spin-offs of his 2022 movie.
In particular, he told TheWrap he would love these possible spin-offs to focus more on the villains.
Recently, JOE chatted to The Penguin’s star Colin Farrell about the strong Irish connections in both The Batman and The Penguin.
We asked Farrell if he was aware when he joined the 2022 blockbuster, that there was going to be such an Irish presence in the franchise going forward and if that was something he encouraged on The Penguin.
And while Farrell said this had nothing to do with him, he was quick to praise his Banshees’ co-stars Gleeson (who appears in the recent Joker sequel) and Keoghan – stating it was their talent alone that led to them being sought out to join the superhero franchise.
You can see his answer in full below:
“No, I wasn’t aware of it and didn’t encourage it. Nothing to do with me, no. That’s just Barry’s talent and Matt Reeves being drawn to Barry’s talent and Brendan’s talent and [Joker 2 director] Todd Phillips being drawn to Brendan’s talent.
“So, no it was nothing to do with me. I didn’t even join the dots. Really cool to hear that, actually. That’s cool.”