Barry Keoghan To Play The Joker?
Could Barry Keoghan be the next Joker? The talented Irish star stood out in his role as Druig in Marvel’s Eternals. It is now being rumoured that Keoghan may be about to hop over to the other side of the fence to join the DC Universe. It has already be announced and established that Keoghan will have a role in next year’s The Batman. However, it is now being suggested that he could in fact be playing this universe’s version of The Clown Prince Of Crime.
Last year in 2020, Keoghan was cast in The Batman as Stanley Merkel. In the comic book source material, Merkel is a Gotham City police officer and Jim Gordon’s first partner. The character of Stan Merkel was originally created by Frank Miller, whom also wrote The Dark Knight Returns. Merkel first appeared in 1986 in the first issue of Dark Knight. In the early days of The Caped Crusader, Merkel would help Jim to hunt Batman, before he became a friend of the police. In Batman: Dark Victory, (the sequel to The Long Halloween,) he was found dead on St. Patrick’s Day.
However, the recent online chatter suggests that The Batman director Matt Reeves could be twisting and re-adapting Stanley Merkel’s backstory, in order to set him up to eventually become The Joker in Robert Pattinson’s Batman universe. This would mark the third time that we have been shown The Joker’s origin on the big screen, (the first two being Batman ’89 and Todd Phillip’s Joker,) although the character’s origin is infamously mysterious in the comic books.
The other possibility is that the announcement that Keoghan is playing Stanley Merkel was nothing more than a misdirect and he was chosen to play The Joker from the very beginning. The logic behind this theory is that in both trailers for The Batman, we see a gang that wear Jokeresque makeup on their faces, suggesting that they were followers of The Joker at some point before the events of The Batman take place. Therefore, Joker must have already came onto the scene as the full-fledged psychotic killer that we all know and love and it wouldn’t make sense for Merkel to transform into The Joker over the course of this film.
All of this speculation sprang from a rumour that was originally posted by an Instagram account called; DeuxMoi. Having done some light research on DeuxMoi, they seem to have a pretty decent track record of reporting accurate leaks in the past. This is the message that they posted to their 1.2 million Instagram followers:
I have really lockdown information that probably will send the internet in a swirl and it’s a hundred percent true.
Barry Keoghan will be playing THE JOKER in the new BATMAN, you’re welcome exclusive info.
Via: DeuxMoi
As with any of these rumours, please take a huge grain of salt with this one. Personally though, I would not mind this casting choice at all if the rumour does turn out to be true. Keoghan has a very distinct look and acting style and I have no doubt that he would be able to bring a darkly unique quality to the role. Even playing a heroic character in Eternals, he still brought an unpredictability to the role that would be perfect to amplify in his performance as Joker.
Do you feel the same way? Would you be happy to see Keoghan take on the role as the next Joker? Or do you have someone else in mind that you would rather see in the role? Let us know in the comments section down below .
You can check out Dan’s review of Eternals right here.
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