Sounds Like ‘The Batman: Part II’ Is Swinging For ‘The Dark Knight’s Crown

Mascara at the ready, Robert Pattinson—you’re headed back to Gotham City (Nirvana’s Version). Following a series of delays behind the scenes, The Batman: Part II is reportedly set to begin shooting in London next month.

Quite remarkably for such a long-awaited comic book movie in the social media age—where productions tend to be leakier than a broken faucet, plot points and cameo appearances doing the rounds well in advance of release—story details remain firmly under wraps. Truth be told, we know next to nothing about the sequel to writer-director Matt Reeves’s smash, grunge-coded hit, other than that RPatz will indeed return as the Caped Crusader, Andy Serkis is back as loyal butler Alfred Pennyworth, and a slew of fresh faces are in late-stage casting talks.

So, most of this is very much speculative. But it stands to reason that Part II will pick up some time following the explosive climax of The Batman and the events of its TV spin-off The Penguin, which saw Gotham picking up the pieces after The Riddler (Paul Dano) flooded swathes of the city in a catastrophic terrorist attack. Saltburn menace Barry Keoghan, aka the Ringo Starr of Sam Mendes’ upcoming Beatles movies, was glimpsed at the end of the movie as the Joker, cackling away under lockdown at the Arkham State Hospital. Rumors abound that he’ll play some part in the sequel, be it as the big bad or as one of the many supporting villains that typically make up the rogue’s gallery of a superhero flick. (When asked in the press, the actor has himself played coy about any prospective return. “I cannot answer that question truly, sincerely,” he said in a recent Wired interview. “Cannot talk about that.” Sorta sounds like a guy who knows he’s set for some prolonged mornings in the makeup chair.)

According to a January report in Deadline, Sebastian—an MCU mainstay and recent Oscar nominee for playing Young-ish Donald Trump—is “in talks” to portray an unknown character in the film. Rumous soon circulated on film blogs that Stan was set to play Harvey Dent, Gotham’s idealistic District Attorney who, in most comic storylines (and, indeed, in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight), becomes the coin-flipping tragivillain Two-Face. The Hollywood Reporter seemed to confirm the rumors in April, when they reported that Game of Thrones veteran Charles Dance was being eyed to play Dent’s father. (Previously, online whispers had suggested that Robert De Niro, Brad Pitt, Stellan Skarsgård, and Daniel Craig were also approached for the role.) They further buried the lede by noting that Stan’s fellow Marvel alum Scarlett Johansson, who had also been in talks to appear in Part II, is set to appear as Dent’s wife.

What does that mean for the plot? This remains very much in “rumor” territory, but some online reports suggest something of a team-up between Bruce Wayne, Dent. and top cop Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright, whose return is yet to be officially confirmed) as they try to finally stamp out the organized crime syndicates running rampant in Gotham. In a recent Deadline interview, Pattinson teased that Part II would be “very, very different” from its predecessor, promising some “big swings” that will set it apart from the Batflicks to come before it. Colin Farrell, who is expected to reprise his role as mob boss The Penguin, went so far as to describe Reeves’s script as a “contemporary genre masterwork” on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “It’s dense, it’s really, really intelligent. It’s so deep and detailed… I think he’s going to make an extraordinary film,” he continued.

As it stands, The Batman: Part II is set to release on October 1 2027, after having initially been announced for October 2025. But it sure sounds like it’ll be worth the wait.