Scarlett Johansson has all but signed on the dotted line for Matt Reeves’ upcoming cape flick, but her role remains a mystery.
Scarlett Johansson seems to have landed on “queen of the franchises” for her mid-career stretch. Having hung out in the MCU from 2010’s Iron Man 2 to 2021’s Black Widow, starred in the recent soft reboot Jurassic World: Rebirth, and signed on to headline Mike Flanagan’s upcoming The Exorcist do-over, the Ghost World and Lost In Translation star is reportedly in final negotiations to join Matt Reeves’ The Batman: Part II. That’s three reboots at a trot, a certain sign that our culture is in terminal decline. Nonetheless, good for her.
The Hollywood Reporter has the full story, noting that ScarJo, as she probably hates being called, will be joining Robert Pattinson, Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, and Colin Farrell in the sequel to 2021’s The Batman. It’s been a long time coming, too – The Batman: Part II was first announced in April 2022, with a release date set for October 2025. Obviously, the original release date dopplered by without a new Batflick gracing our screens, as did the revised date of October 2026. We’re now set for October 2027, which is a hell of a gap in the world of modern franchise filmmaking – barely three years passed between the last couple of Jurassic movies. Principal photography is set to kick off around April/May in the UK.
But who’s she playing? That’s the question, isn’t it? And so far we have no hard answers. The consensus seems to be that plant-powered Poison Ivy is a bit too comic book for Matt Reeves’ bleak take on the Dark Knight, but never say never. Harley Quinn is probably out of bounds – Margot Robbie owns that role, and Joker: Folie A Deux proved that beyond the shadow of a doubt.
A lot of folks are speculating that she might be up for the role of Andrea Beaumont, young Bruce Wayne’s first love and, as the mobster-murderin’ Phantasm, later nemesis, as seen in the excellent 1993 animated feature, Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm, Personally, I don’t see it. You have to lay a fair whack of narrative pipe to get to get to the point where the Phantasm is slicing up gangsters, and while it’s not impossible, it’d take some effort to rework the character to fit Reeves’ gritty Gotham City. But I’ve been wrong before.
Gun to my head, I’d say she’ll probably have some connection to the Court Of Owls, the shadowy cabal of blue bloods who secretly rule Gotham (the comics have gotten pretty wild in recent years, folks), but we’ll have to wait and see.
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