BATMAN star Barry Keoghan reveals whether he has been approached to play the Joker in PART II

IN BatmanThe Riddler is defeated by the Dark Knight and locked up in Arkham. Then, in the final moments of the film, the serial killer makes a new friend, who we would later discover is Barry Keoghan’s Joker.

Warner Bros. released an extended deleted scene from the film while it was still in theaters where Batman visited The Joker in Arkham to see if his twisted mind could help track down Edward Nashton. It turns out that the vigilante had placed the villain behind bars during his “Year One” in Gotham City, setting the stage for an inevitable rematch between the two arch-enemies.

It has been widely reported that The Joker will return Batman Part IIthough filmmaker Matt Reeves may have bigger plans for this sinister new version of the Clown Prince of Crime in his eventual third film.

Speaking to Josh Horowitz, Keoghan shared his hopes of returning as The Joker, but claimed he was being kept in the dark about his DC future.

“It’s a big one, but I would say if the opportunity came, yes, I would love to explore it and, given the opportunity, really dive into it.” says the Irish actor in the video below. “But I haven’t been contacted, I haven’t heard anything.”

He would go on to confirm that he put a lot of thought into The Joker’s story and look, praising the work of makeup artist Mike Marino (who also transformed Colin Farrell into Oz Cobb).

In the video below, Keoghan comments on his role as Druig in Eternal but stopped short of weighing in on a possible return or whether he’s disappointed that Marvel Studios has essentially given up on the characters after the 2021 film’s big cliffhanger ending.

Talk about putting a new spin on the Joker while promoting The penguinReeves said, “Every time you get to approach any of these characters, you have to find a fresh way to do it. So that makes it incredibly scary. At the same time, this version of Penguin is a version of Penguin that no one has ever had . seen.”

“The only way to do that is to feel like you’ve earned your place, because otherwise you’re just doing more and people say, ‘Well, we’ve seen that, so what do you have for us?’ So how can it be the thing we love but also something we haven’t seen?” the filmmaker continued. “That’s always the challenge. So with a character like that, it had to be the bar.”

While many fans feel the Joker has been done to death on screen, the villain hasn’t actually shared the screen with Batman since 2008’s The Dark Knight (it’s up to you if you count the “reach around” moment Zack Snyder’s Justice League).

Plans for an Arkham-set TV series have been scrapped, so only time will tell how much more we’ll see of The Joker in Reeves’ “The Batman Epic Crime Saga.”

Batman Part II is set to be released in theaters on October 2, 2026.