Even though, “The Dark Knight” was released nine weeks ago, everyone is already talking about a sequel. The same people have also been projecting who they want the villains to be and who is going to play them. Most are boring predictable choices like, Angelina Jolie as Catwoman, Johnny Depp as the Riddler, or Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin. Well, in a recent interview, Michael Caine let it slip that the previous two actors would become the villains speculated by most of those antsy fans.
“I was with [a Warner Bros.] executive and I said, ‘Are we going to make another one?’ They said yeah. I said, ‘How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says ‘I’ll tell you how you top Heath — Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin.’ I said, ‘Shit, they’ve done it again!’”
This doesn’t mean that the two actors are playing the characters. All it means is that they are the actors the studio has in mind. The script hasn’t even been written yet, and Christopher Nolan has already said no to the Penguin, so this really doesn’t mean a whole lot, since we don’t even know which characters are going to be in the film. Both of those actors would fit the roles perfectly, but not necessarily in the universe that Nolan and David Goyer have built. This franchise doesn’t need a designated movie star like Depp to be successful. All that would do is put more twelve year old girls with slashes on their wrists in the already packed theaters. [MTV]
It’s true– they don’t need big names, and I wish they’d realize it. I love how all of the characters so far have been familiar names, but not necessarily huge names– you’ve gotta admit that before their turns in Batman, Christian Bale, Cillian Murphy, Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart weren’t HUGE. And I love that. It’s highly necessary that Gotham characters keep a bit of an almost “everyman” quality, because each character is relatable in one way or another. You can’t have that with big names.
Plus, they’ve already done that for Batman. It was done by Joel Schumacher.