For years the follow-up to Matt Reeves’ slick but glacially paced 2022 comic-book epic The Batman has existed in a dimly lit rumour void. We know it will eventually get here (supposedly in October 2027), but nobody knows quite what it will look like. Entire geological epochs may come and go before the film-maker finally decides which doyen of Batman’s infamous rogues’ gallery he wants to unleash next. The foundations of Gotham itself may shift before Reeves works out which brooding, rain-soaked grunge ditty will form the basis of the new soundtrack.
And then – out of nowhere – comes this week’s news that Scarlett Johansson is in final talks to join the cast of the sequel. We have no idea who she’s likely to play but it matters not: this feels consequential, a bat-signal flickering to life over a city long abandoned. Johansson is more than just an A-lister; she’s one of the few actors who still puts bums on seats and appears in Wes Anderson movies. She retains a veneer of golden-era Hollywood cool that feels exactly right.
What does her involvement tell us? In years past, the media might have mocked up images of Johansson as Poison Ivy or Harley Quinn, but neither is particularly likely to show up. First there’s The Batman itself, which was one of the more orthodox and street-level big-screen outings. Not for Reeves a shared universe in which superheroes and villains exist alongside the Dark Knight’s more homegrown nemeses: this will be left for Andy Muschietti’s Batman: The Brave and the Bold, which – unlike the Battinson movies – will exist within James Gunn’s mainstream DCU.
Reeves prefers his Gotham grimy and grounded. His villains aren’t cosmic tyrants; they’re maladjusted weirdos with unresolved childhoods. Quinn has already been introduced in Joker: Folie à Deux, and Johansson can’t play Sofia Falcone, because Cristin Milioti already snagged that role in The Penguin TV series. Options for well-known Batman-adjacent female characters are limited; Zoë Kravitz played a version of Catwoman in the last film.
There has been speculation in corners of the blogosphere that Johansson might be playing Andrea Beaumont, AKA Phantasm, a villain whose serial-killer instincts would seem to fit Reeves’ penchant for Gotham tales steeped in crime, trauma and municipal mildew. Reeves has said he’s looking for an antagonist who “goes into Batman’s past and his life”, and Beaumont ticks that box with gusto: an old flame of Bruce’s in the comics and (more definitively) 1993’s animated Mask of the Phantasm film, a woman whose heartbreak curdled into masked vengeance. Her origin story even makes room for the Joker as a low-level mobster – a detail that would let Reeves begin teeing up Barry Keoghan’s chaos-goblin for a third instalment.
Perhaps the more interesting question is what a five-year gap between episodes does to a franchise originally pitched as a three-part story. Trilogies are meant to build momentum, not ossify into prestige archaeological curios, yet here we are. Maybe that’s the charm of this strange, sodden universe. Perhaps this is just a Gotham where villains fester for years, A-listers drift in like supernatural omens, and every update feels like a transmission from some alternate Batverse.
If Johansson really is joining the fray, at least this suggests the Reeves-Pattinson trilogy is stirring again, however tentatively. With luck, part two may just lumber into cinemas before Warner Bros unveils its next new Batman.
