Andy Serkis is undoubtedly one of the greatest character actors of our generation, and he is reuniting with his Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves on The Batman, playing Bruce Wayne’s loyal butler Alfred Pennyworth. Serkis spent his two Apes movies in a motion capture suit, continuing to pioneer the technology that allowed him to bring Gollum and King Kong to life in Lord of the Rings and as the titular character in Peter Jackson’s remake of the 1933 classic, but it was essentially working with Matt Reeves on the movie that made it an easy decision to work with him again on The Batman.
Serkis is just one of stars who appear in the ensemble movie, starring alongside Robert Pattinson as the youngest version of the character seen on the big screen, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright and Colin Farrell, and while we are expecting to see more information about the movie coming out of DC FanDome in October, there is currently a lot of secrecy around what we will get from The Batman. It looks like Andy Serkis isn’t about to change that, but he was happy to praise his director.
“It was definitely to work with Matt,” he told Uproxx about joining being part of the movie. “I’d love to be able to talk about it, but I can’t talk anything about it. I’ve been forbidden to talk about Alfred! I can’t really talk about The Batman.”
Serkis was speaking while promoting Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which he directs, and while he has been much happier to talk about that movie, he has previously heaped praise on Matt Reeves and has assured fans that they are going to get something “special” when The Batman arrives.
“What I will say is that I’m pretty certain Matt Reeves, who is a very dear friend of mine and of course we’ve worked together on the Planet of the Apes movies, I know for a fact he’s making a pretty amazing picture,” Serkis said in a previous interview with ScreenRant. “I really think it’s going to be special.”
The character of Alfred has been played on screen a number of times, and despite his first appearances being pretty consistent, with Michael Goff portraying the butler as a standard older servant to Michael Keaton’s Batman, and stayed on through the Val Kilmer and George Clooney outings. Michael Caine took on the role in the Christopher Nolan movies, and Jeremy Irons played a more tech-savvy version in Justice League. In addition to this, Sean Pertwee appeared in the Gotham TV series in the role, bringing a more aggressive side of the character out, something that was brought out even more in the series Pennyworth, which saw Jack Bannon playing the former SAS soldier building a security firm in an alternative reality where the Nazi’s won World War II.
It has already been suggested from the footage of The Batman that we have seen that Andy Serkis is certainly going to play a rougher and tougher Alfred, so don’t expect a side-parting and gentle way of talking, but like everything Serkis does, you can certainly expect him to bring a lot of character to the new Alfred.
The Batman is currently set to arrive in theaters in March 2022, and keep an eye on this year’s DC FanDome on October 16th for more about the movie. This news comes to us from Uproxx.