Andy Serkis Confirmed To Return In His Best Franchise
Andy Serkis will return as Alfred in The Batman Part II.
There hasn’t been much news yet about the plot of The Batman Part II, other than that it is happening, and that it will star Robert Pattinson as the titular character once again. GQ, though, just gave us another tidbit of what to expect when the Batman sequel hits theaters: Andy Serkis will be returning as Bruce Wayne’s butler and confidant, Alfred Pennyworth.
Director Matt Reeves confirmed the news in an interview with GQ, and also went on to explain why he had to have Andy Serkis for that role in the first place. “He is a genius,” he said. Choosing the Star Wars actor to play Alfred was one of the very first big decisions he made for the first film, because he was sure that Serkis could play the character with emotion and gravitas in a way no one else could.
Reeves went on to explain that he wanted people to see Andy Serkis’ face and its expressiveness, “not some avatar,” so they could get a glimpse of just how talented he is as an actor. This is a particularly compelling argument, as Andy Serkis is best known for his motion capture roles in films like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which he played the animated creature Gollum, and the Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy, in which he played Caesar, the computer-generated leader of the apes.
With that kind of confidence in his abilities coming from the director, it is no surprise that Andy Serkis said yes to the role. He helped to make the movie a blockbuster: it earned well over $700 million around the world. A sequel was a given after seeing how well the first film did at the box office, but that sequel is not set to start filming until November 2023.
To fill in the large gap between the 2022 Batman film and the one that isn’t slated to premiere until October of 2025, HBO Max will be debuting a new series set in the same world as The Batman. The show will be about the Penguin and will see Colin Farrell return as Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot. It will give fans a look at his journey to becoming one of the most dangerous supervillains in Gotham City (which is really saying something: that city is full of supervillains).
Andy Serkis and the rest of the cast had to deal with crisis after crisis during the filming of the first Batman film thanks to interruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic, but hopefully, the shooting for the second film will go much more smoothly.
Aside from The Batman Part II, you can catch Andy Serkis in Luther: The Fallen Sun on Netflix starting on March 10th. Other than that, though, the seasoned actor isn’t really sure where he wants his career to go from here.
“I don’t have a burning desire to play [anyone],” he said in an interview. What he wants, instead, is to go back to performing live on the stage, something that he is both 100% certain about and completely “terrified” of. No matter what he chooses to do, however, he will surely have an audience of loyal fans to follow him.
