Warner Bros. debuted the (very good) first trailer for Matt Reeves’ The Batman over the weekend during the virtual DC FanDome event, which gave news outlets all kinds of fun things to write about—like our first look at James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (you can tell all these movies are different from the other DC movies because they have “The” in the title) and whatever the hell is going on with Colin Farrell’s Penguin in The Batman (he looks like Tom Wilkinson?). Something that apparently everyone failed to mention during The Batman portion of the event was the late casting addition of Barry Keoghan. As revealed in a press release sent out after the event and obtained by /Film, Keoghan has signed on to play a motherfuckin’ cop in The Batman—specifically Officer Stanley Merkel, a character who appeared in the comic book Batman: Year Two as Commissioner James Gordon’s first partner. It’s unclear if Keoghan’s Merkel will be included in flashbacks or if the character has been refashioned for the new film, which features Jeffrey Wright as Gordon.
Keoghan is best known for his roles in The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (which also starred Farrell) and American Animals, and has a couple of highly-anticipated films on deck that were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic: Marvel’s The Eternals and A24's The Green Knight, directed by David Lowery. Like The Batman’s Robert Pattinson, Keoghan is also a Christopher Nolan boy, having previously appeared in Dunkirk (that’s the one about war). The Batman, which also stars Zoe Kravitz and Paul Dano, is currently scheduled for release on October 1, 2021.