(NOTE LANGUAGE) In a wide-ranging feature chat with The Hollywood Reporter, Michael Keaton drops some hints about his upcoming return as the Caped Crusader in the upcoming Flash film.
Although the Oscar winner starred in 1989’s Batman, which kicked off the superhero movie craze — and also played the villain Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming and appears in the upcoming Mobius — Keaton says he knows nothing about comic books.
For Mobius, a Sony/Marvel film starring Jared Leto as the vampiric anti-hero, Keaton says the filmmakers walked him through recent MCU lore. “I’m nodding like I know what the f*** they’re talking about,” Keaton admits.
He adds, “So finally, they were looking at me, and they just started laughing. They said, ‘You don’t know what we’re talking about, do you?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t, no idea what you’re talking about.'”
As for returning as Batman in Flash, Keaton says it was It director Andy Muschietti‘s vision and Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson‘s script that hooked him. But there was something else, too.
“Frankly, in the back of my head, I always thought, ‘I bet I could go back and nail that motherf*****,” Keaton says of the Dark Knight, after refusing to star in Batman Forever back in 1995. That said, the script that sees a time-shifting Ezra Miller‘s Flash exposing various timelines — and Batmen, including Ben Affleck‘s — was puzzling to Keaton.
“They had to explain that to me several times,” he confesses.
Keaton also admits, “What’s really interesting is how much more I got [Batman] when I went back and did him [again]. I get this on a whole other level now. I totally respect it…It’s iconic…”
Sony’s Mobius opens in January of 2022; Warner Bros.’ Flash debuts in November of 2022.
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