Internet forces James Gunn to slap down Barry Keoghan Joker show rumors

We’ve noted, on more than one occasion, what a weird position James Gunn holds in the Hollywood hierarchy. As the only director (and now studio head) who’s actually pretty good, on a personal level, at social media (with, y’know, one or two notable blips), Gunn clearly delights in having a more direct line to his audience than most people in his position. It does create the situation, though, where the man has to periodically wade into the trenches himself to smack down weird and rampant speculation, even though he does have an incredibly high-stakes Superman movie he’s supposed to be getting out next year.

Case in point: Gunn hopped on Meta’s Threads this weekend to fervently deny that a Joker TV show, starring the Barry Keoghan version of the villain very briefly revealed in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, was in the works. Or even being talked about. Or thought about, by anyone with decision-making power. “A Joker series is not being discussed nor has even come up at this time,” Gunn wrote, saying he’d been getting swamped recently with questions about the idea. (Presumably kicked off by the success of The Penguin, which managed to make a successful, if flawed, crime show out of the marginalia of Reeves’ film.)

Keoghan’s appearance in The Batman is one of its weirder elements, appearing basically as a tease for some future mayhem. (He had a larger part filmed, doing a bit of Hannibal Lecter opposite Robert Pattinson’s Batman, but it was cut after Reeves decided the scene wasn’t necessary to the movie’s plot.) There have, to be fair, been a lot of side stories put forward on the TV side to fit in the cracks of Reeves’ version of Gotham City—including killed-off shows set at Arkham Asylum and in the city’s police department—but so far only The Penguin has actually made it to air. Reeves has said he’s interested in more spin-off series, though, which probably helped start this latest round of rumors. In any case, Gunn—who’s been extremely proactive about debunking rumors of this ilk—isn’t having any of it: “There is absolutely no truth to this.” (Although he did also have a little bit of fun, joking that he’d back Reeves a thousand percent if he wanted to do a TV show about recurring Batman joke villain Condiment King.)