Is Matthew McConaughey Going To Be In The Batman?
Alright, alright, alright... it's time for yet another rumor concerning Matt Reeves' The Batman.
According to those intrepid rumor hounds at We Got This Covered, Matthew McConaughey is being considered to play Harvey Dent in the upcoming rebooted solo vehicle for the Dark Knight. According to the site's sources, the Oscar-winning actor will appear only as Dent in the movie, with his transformation into his villainous alter ego Two-Face to be saved for the flick's sequel.
It would be a remarkable casting coup for the production, which recently lost out on the services of the uber-talented Jonah Hill; he had been circling an undisclosed role for over a month before ultimately passing. The report lines up with a previous rumor indicating that The Batman would be introducing an extensive rogues' gallery of up to six villains, many of whom may not yet be seen in full-on supervillain mode, as the flick will feature a younger Caped Crusader (portrayed by the highly underrated Robert Pattinson) who is still functioning as more of a skilled detective than a butt-kicking vigilante.
Incidentally, that previous report did indicate that one of the villains to make an appearance would indeed be Two-Face, and the casting news that has come down the pike so far has tentatively bolstered the notion that The Batman will feature villains aplenty. The movie is still relatively early in the casting process, yet so far, we've seen Zoë Kravitz (Mad Max: Fury Road) cast as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, and Paul Dano (Escape at Dannemora) tapped to play the Riddler, one of the roles Hill was said to be in the running for. Jeffrey Wright (Westworld) has also been hired to play longtime Batman ally Jim Gordon.
Early in his career, McConaughey was known mostly for playing shirtless, cool-dude romantic leads and other similarly lightweight roles, although the reputation was not exactly deserved. He turned in killer dramatic performances in Joel Schumacher's 1996 legal drama A Time to Kill and Bill Paxton's 2001 psychological horror flick Frailty, for example — but this did little to keep him from getting pigeonholed as the laconic stoner type he portrayed in rom-coms like 2006's Failure to Launch.
Of late, though, the actor has enjoyed what the press has reveled in referring to as the "McConaissance," picking up a Best Actor Oscar for 2013's Dallas Buyers' Club and delivering critically lauded performances in flicks like Christopher Nolan's Interstellar and Steven Soderbergh's male stripper dramedy Magic Mike, as well as the first season of the HBO crime drama series True Detective. It seems like the right time in his career to go ahead and join the superhero film party — so, is this rumor on the money, or is it a bunch of malarkey?
Is Matthew McConaughey really playing Two-Face in The Batman?
Well, anything's possible — heck, as of this writing, the actor's IMDb page has even been updated to indicate that it's a done deal. We respectfully submit, though, that whoever is in charge of such things just made a little bit of extra work for themselves, because they'll just have to re-update it when this rumor proves to be bunk.
Now, we don't mean to be killjoys, and it's worth pointing out that the only project McConaughey is currently conformed to have in the pipeline is a voice role in the fervently anticipated sequel to the animated feature Sing. (We slipped in a little sarcasm there, but there's a reason that movie is getting a sequel; although nobody on Earth seems to remember buying a ticket, it somehow grossed well over $600 million dollars worldwide.)
But, here's the thing: so far, everything about The Batman's production, from conception to casting, has been remarkably transparent. Reeves was going off to the press about how his movie was going to be a gritty, noir-infused detective story almost a year ago, and the casting of Pattinson — obviously the most critical aspect of the whole endeavor — was in the realm of rumor for about ten seconds before it was all but confirmed by about a billion media outlets. (For the record, official confirmation didn't come until about three months later.)
The possible involvement of Wright was reported as soon as the actor entered into talks for the role, and was confirmed in no time flat — and as for Kravitz and Dano, the news of their joining the production seemed to have broken near-instantaneously.
As we saw with Pattinson's casting, multiple outlets jumping all over a juicy casting rumor are often a pretty strong indicator that there's something to the talk — and conversely, when such a rumor is only being reported by one source, it should probably be viewed a little more skeptically. In this case, WGTC and its mysterious "inside sources" are the only ones pumping up the notion that McConaughey is circling the role of Dent. If the actor were indeed being considered or in talks, it sure seems like this would not be the case — and unfortunately, in recent months, WGTC's sources have missed substantially more often than they've hit.
We'd also like to point out that the whole "saving the villainous transformation for the sequel" angle to the rumor does not add to the case for its accuracy, because a sequel to The Batman has in no way been confirmed. Sure, we all know that Warner Bros. and DC Films have their hearts set on the flick launching a new franchise — but, having learned from the relative failure of Man of Steel, Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Suicide Squad, and Justice League to set up a successful shared universe, it seems unlikely that the studios will put all of their Bat-eggs in Reeves' basket, so to speak.
No, we're going to go ahead and call this one "highly unlikely" — although if we turn out to be wrong, we'll be just as excited as everyone else. As we've seen with Aaron Eckhart's excellent performance as Dent in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, it takes a heck of an actor to nail the role, and despite taking on a few questionable roles in the past, McConaughey is a heck of an actor. Alright? Alright.