Movie Chronicles » The Dark Knight

Depp as The Riddler, Hoffman as Penguin in Batman 3? September 8th, 2008

We posted these rumors a short while back (along with a Jolie Cat­woman one), but now some news of this cast­ing has come from the lips of Michael Caine in speak­ing with MTV:

“They’ve already got them in mind,” said Caine, when asked who he’d like to see take up arms against the Caped Cru­sader. “It’s Johnny Depp as The Rid­dler. And The Pen­guin is Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man. I read it in the paper.”

So Caine is like the rest of us, read­ing gos­sip in the tabloids, right? Except for one thing…according to the actor, he con­firmed the news through the stu­dio itself.

“When Christo­pher [Nolan] said we were going to do ‘The Dark Knight’ next, I didn’t what that meant in Bat­man terms,” related Caine, who plays Bruce Wayne’s loyal but­ler, Alfred Pen­ny­worth. “I said, ‘What’s the story?’ and he said The Joker. I said, ‘Oh, s–t! How are you going to top Jack [Nichol­son]?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve cast Heath Ledger. And I went ‘Ha! I couldn’t top Jack, but if any­one could, maybe Heath could.’ And he did.

“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, ‘S–t, they’ve done it again!’” [Laughs]

No doubt there will be some offi­cial clar­i­fi­ca­tion of this announce­ment in the com­ing days, how­ever what is inter­est­ing is the clear inten­tion for The Pen­guin and The Rid­dler to star in the third movie, whether Depp or Hoff­man sign on is another mat­ter — and one that I still don’t see being con­firmed for a long while yet.

How do you feel about The Rid­dler and Pen­guin poten­tially appear­ing in Bat­man 3?

Comments 24 Responses to “Depp as The Riddler, Hoffman as Penguin in Batman 3?”

Y.A.N September 8th, 2008

I like the idea of hav­ing the Rid­dler, and I think Depp would do a hell of a job.


b-dawg September 8th, 2008

Not depp… any­one else but depp… well get another Spar­row. Dont get me wrong, i love Depp, hes bril­liant, but his best char­ac­ter is Duke from Fear and Loathing. All his roles are try­ing to copy that.

I dont believe it though, Nolan would look for some­one who is will­ing to really push it and give the char­ac­ter some real soul, like ledger did. Im a bit fan of David Ten­nant (Dr Who, harry pot­ter) or some­one else as the joker.

But Hoff­man as Pen­guin could work.

But i like the rid­dler and pen­guin. wouldnt mind see­ing some lesser known char­ac­ters, they worked well in the BB.


Tim September 8th, 2008

None of that is true. Nolan isn’t bring­ing the Pen­guin into his films and Depp has already said he wasn’t approached to play the Rid­dler but did say it would be a “fun gig”. These rumors are so old, btw.


Keith September 9th, 2008

why would they be cast­ing only two months after TDK came out?

It doesn’t make sense.

I expect news this sum­mer; any­thing before that is 95% chance to be a rumor


Rev­eren­dRossko September 9th, 2008

I think these are just rumours. I also think it would be REALLY hard to bring The Rid­dler into Nolan’s Gotham. He’s just a lame sec­ond rate char­ac­ter. Pen­guin could work, if care­ful.
You never know, maybe cer­tain folk will feel dif­fer­ently about re-casting The Joker in 2 or 3 years time. I sug­gest Crispin Glover for the job, although I don’t think any­one could do it bet­ter than Mr Ledger. I would pre­fer lesser known vil­lains, tho.
My choice would be a Zsasz & Hugo Strange. But The Joker has always been my favourite since I was a kid.


wicked­clown­jake September 9th, 2008

Given the right moti­va­tion Tom Cruze would make a good joker,or Vin Desael as Bane,hell CGI Killer Crock lots of ways 2 go insted of the latter.


DAVID S. September 9th, 2008

Johnny Depp or Jude Law as the Rid­dler would sat­isfy me. Bob Hoskins play the Pen­guin would be badass. And Sheri Moon Zom­bie play Harley Quinn would be cool, and have Rob Zom­bie design the costume.


Fuschnikt September 9th, 2008

Sheri Moon Zom­bie is a third rate, piss poor actress who ruins Rob Zom­bies films. Her poor act­ing always takes me out of the story, remind­ing me thayt she is only in it for one rea­son. Nepetism is a bitch.


Fuschnikt September 9th, 2008

Also, Philip Set­more Hoff­man is one of my five favorite actors and would do for Pen­guin what Ledger did for Joker. He would knock it out of the park. I think Depp is a lit­tle too obvi­ous and hol­ly­wood, but it could work if he put in some effort and didn’t just crank out a same old same old character.


Matthew September 10th, 2008

I think they need to do the lesser known vil­lians. I think Black Mask/Roman Sio­nis would be per­fect for the world that Nolan has cre­ated. Plus to see him sort of play off both Bat­man and Bruce Wayne I think would be great.


xau­rthaon September 13th, 2008

This may sound crazy, but I think they might be able to bring back the joker. I saw a pic­ture of Mark Paul Gos­se­laar in his new steven bochco series. Right away when I saw the pic­ture, it made me think that in appear­ance, at least, he might serve as a replace­ment for Heath Ledger. Also, I don’t know much about the orig­i­nal bat­man comic book, but I think Charlise Theron would make a good Vicki Vale. I have ques­tions about Hav­ing Angelina Jolie as cat­woman. She has the look, but I don’t know if the more seri­ous, dark aura of the new bat­man movies would be kept real if she was in it.


OYD September 15th, 2008

per­son­ally, i don’t like dark knight very much at all. so does it really mat­ter who the vil­lains in the sequel are? it’s just gonne be really bor­ing like the first two movies. if they did have two vil­lains, it should be Mr. Freeze and Mys­te­rio! those guys are awesome


Fuschnikt September 16th, 2008

Mys­te­rio? From the Mar­vel comics? No won­der you didn’t like The Dark Knight. Very mis-informed you are, sir.


Tim September 16th, 2008

lol @ Fuschnikt


steve September 22nd, 2008

Guy Pearce will be the Rid­dler
thats all


JJS3 October 5th, 2008

FORGET THE DUMBASS PENGUIN!!!!!!! GIVE US BANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Mark October 10th, 2008

Begins and DK have some lovely ele­ments and ulti­mately it would be won­der­ful to see a city rav­aged by chaos and these films pro­vide an intro­duc­tion to the Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. I feel if we dis­cuss vil­lians like the rid­dler et al then this is a step back­ward. A start­ing scene in the next film with a 60 year old man rac­ing a motor­bike and fin­ish­ing with the tri­umph over Super­man would be excit­ing, refresh­ing and finally put this char­ac­ter into the Sin City type genre it should always have aspired to. The mate­r­ial has always been there but he dam­age to the Super­man band­wagon is what is pre­vent­ing this mile­stone. Wish­ful think­ing pehaps but any­thing less will be milk­ing the audi­ence. Spe­cial effects are easy. Give us plotlines!


JC October 16th, 2008

No Depp, no Jolie, get some real actors like they did before.


mk November 18th, 2008

I dont care about the rid­dler or pen­guin just as long as cat­woman is in it, some­body tell Nolan that he should have a strong part for a woman in at least one of his movies (my pick is Rosario Dawson)


Spock December 12th, 2008

David Ten­nant would be way bet­ter as The Rid­dler, if you don’t know who he is, look up Doc­tor Who or Harry Pot­ter 4.
And Jack Black should play as the Penguin.


Spock December 12th, 2008

Oh and Depp is like the worst choice for the Rid­dler. I don’t want him Nolan’s bat­man films at all or Jim Carey


James Gilks February 5th, 2009

This is James Gilks (owner of Seri​alKiller​Cal​en​dar​.com) per­son­ally I would love it if they took the idea of the Rid­dler to a very dark extreme. His char­ac­ter is very close to real life ser­ial killers like David Berkowitz (the son of sam) and the Zodiac Killer. Many ser­ial killers (includ­ing Jack The Rip­per and The Red Spi­der) have sent let­ters to the police and the Zodiac killer sent cryp­tograms (which where in essence a type of rid­dle). I think that if Hol­ly­wood is will­ing to take these films to the gritty dark side of real life, they should focus more on this angel and aban­don the tacky jump suit wear­ing, car­toon aspect that Jim Carey brought to the screen. I would love to see a down right evil and twisted ser­ial killer side to the Riddler.

I also believe that they are set­ting up The Mad Hat­ter for a future movie. If you watch care­fully, Bat­man says that the man Dent is inter­ro­gat­ing in The Dark Knight (the creepy smil­ing guy from the ambu­lance) is named “Jervis Tetch”. This is The Mad Hatter.

Lastly, I would love to see all these films come together in to a plot that involves Arkham Asy­lum. There have been many amaz­ing graphic nov­els that focus on this (espe­cially “A Seri­ous Place on Seri­ous Earth”). This would be a per­fect oppor­tu­nity for the writ­ers to place Bat­man against not only a huge cast of badies but also against his own trou­bled mind.)

Well, thats just the opin­ion of some­one who runs a com­pany devoted to sell­ing ser­ial killer mer­chan­dise so you can take it or leave it. I hope you can all stop by Seri​alKiller​Cal​en​dar​.com to pick up some mor­bid merch (includ­ing the new Ser­ial Killer Mag­a­zine, Ser­ial Killer Trad­ing Cards and Ser­ial Killer Action Fig­ures. I know, its a shame­less dis­play of self pro­mo­tion but really, I have to jus­tify read­ing up on Bat­man Movies while I am sup­posed to be work­ing somehow.

James Gilks
Owner of Seri​alKiller​Cal​en​dar​.com and Edi­tor of Ser­ial Killer Magazine.


blair September 5th, 2009

Jack ‘The King’ Black should be the pen­guin. He has the look, he has the poten­tial style and has the great­ness to pull of such a well known char­ac­ter. Go on jack!