• Paul Dano says he hopes to return as The Riddler in The Batman Part 2 but is not confirmed
• Barry Keoghan’s Joker and Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman are also unconfirmed for the sequel
• Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, and Brian Tyree Henry are newly confirmed cast members
• A new rumor suggests Sebastian Stan may not actually be playing Harvey Dent
• The Batman Part 2 is scheduled for theaters on October 1, 2027

Paul Dano wants back in — but he’s not sure it’s happening. The actor, who played The Riddler in Matt Reeves’ The Batman back in 2022, is giving fans a cautiously hopeful update about his chances of returning for The Batman Part 2.

In a recent interview with Collider, Dano stopped well short of confirming a comeback. “Matt is so caring and obsessive in bringing such a point of view to that film, and I think he is going to again,” he said. “I could not be more excited to see what he does, and I hope maybe I’ll get to dance again.”

“Hope maybe” isn’t exactly a green light. But it’s not a door slammed shut either — and for fans who consider Dano’s unhinged, meticulous Riddler one of the best comic book villain performances in years, that’s enough to hold onto.

Who’s In, Who’s Out, and Who’s a Mystery

Dano joins a growing list of beloved cast members whose futures in the sequel are officially up in the air. Barry Keoghan’s Joker — teased in that now-legendary deleted scene with Batman at the end of the first film — hasn’t been confirmed either, despite the fact that fans have been clamoring for more of his eerie, unpredictable take on the character. Same goes for Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman, whose chemistry with Robert Pattinson’s Batman was one of the emotional cores of the original.

There’s one absence that’s already been locked in: Cristin Milioti will not be returning as Sofia Falcone. Reeves confirmed it himself, which stings a little given that Milioti won an Emmy for Best Lead Actress in a Limited Series for her work in HBO Max’s The Penguin. That show made her a fan favorite, and losing her from the universe entirely feels like a missed opportunity.

On the confirmed side, the returning core is solid. Robert Pattinson is back as Bruce Wayne, Jeffrey Wright returns as Commissioner Gordon, Andy Serkis is back as Alfred, Colin Farrell reprises The Penguin, and Jayme Lawson and Gil Perez-Abraham are back as Mayor Bella Reál and GCPD officer Martinez, respectively.

The new additions are genuinely exciting. Scarlett Johansson and Sebastian Stan — both fresh off major Marvel projects in Jurassic World Rebirth and Thunderbolts* — are reportedly playing Gilda and Harvey Dent. Brian Tyree Henry (Atlanta, Eternals) has also signed on, though his role hasn’t been disclosed. Charles Dance of Game of Thrones fame is rumored to be playing a character named Christopher Dent, and Bridge of Spies actor Sebastian Koch rounds out the new additions. The sequel is set to begin production in England next month, with the story reportedly taking place during the winter season.

The Sebastian Stan Twist Nobody Saw Coming

Here’s where things get interesting. Even as fans were still processing the Harvey Dent casting news, scooper Jeff Sneider dropped a wrinkle on a recent podcast appearance with John Rocha. He claims he received an email suggesting Stan may not actually be playing Harvey Dent at all.

“I got an email this week. It was a f***ing crazy email,” Sneider said. “It said that someone else is playing Harvey Dent. And it said that Sebastian Stan was playing another villain and that Charles Dance is actually playing Scarlett Johansson’s father.” He was quick to add that his words need “to be taken with a huge grain of salt” — and that Reeves not confirming any specific role details makes him wonder if “there’s some sort of bait and switch going on.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=n1IpopjJi48%3Fstart%3D1639

Stan himself has been characteristically measured about the whole thing. Speaking to Deadline, he called the project “a challenge” and said, “I feel like it’s a really ambitious movie, and I think if we do it all right… I really think it’s going to blow people away. It’s going to surprise a lot of people, I think, too.”

Surprise a lot of people. Given what Sneider is hearing, that might be the most honest thing anyone has said about The Batman Part 2 yet.

The film hits theaters October 1, 2027. Whether Dano gets to “dance again” — and who Sebastian Stan is actually playing — we’ll find out soon enough.

The post Paul Dano Unsure About Returning as Riddler in The Batman 2 appeared first on Cream.

• Sebastian Stan stars in Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, which received a 12-minute standing ovation at its Cannes world premiere — the longest of the festival so far
• Stan plays a Romanian engineer whose conservative religious family is torn apart by Norwegian child protective services after relocating to a fjord village
• Renate Reinsve co-stars as his Norwegian wife; the two previously appeared together in 2024’s A Different Man
• Stan, who was born in Romania, said the film gave him a chance to “rebond” with his home country
• Neon has acquired U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand rights, with early Oscar buzz building around Stan’s multilingual performance

When the credits rolled on Fjord at Cannes, the person sitting next to one critic reportedly gasped “Sebastian Stan!?” — not because he was unrecognizable, exactly, but because nobody quite expected a Marvel star to show up in the new film from Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian director who won the 2007 Palme d’Or for the brutal abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Then again, if you’ve been paying attention to Stan’s choices lately — the droll indie fable A Different Man, his unsettling turn as a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice — you know he’s been deliberately pushing himself into territory most blockbuster actors wouldn’t go near.

Fjord is his most ambitious move yet. The film received a 12-minute standing ovation at its world premiere Monday night, the longest of this year’s festival so far, and it’s easy to understand why. This is a film that refuses to let you get comfortable — and Stan is the engine of that discomfort.

What Fjord Is Actually About

Stan plays Mihai Gheorghiu, a Romanian engineer (described in the film’s press materials as an IT technician, though other accounts identify him as aeronautical) who has relocated his wife Lisbet — played by Sentimental Value standout Renate Reinsve — and their five children, including a nursing baby, to the Norwegian fjord village where Lisbet was born. The family is devoutly Evangelical. No phones, no secular music, no YouTube. Homosexuality is taught as a mortal sin. The kids study the Bible. Mihai plays hymns in the cafeteria at lunch.

None of that is illegal. But when one of the older children, Elia (Vanessa Ceban), shows up at school with bruises on her back, a teacher calls child protective services. And from there, Fjord becomes something far harder to categorize than a simple immigrant family drama.

The Norwegian state moves swiftly — all five children are removed from the household while an investigation proceeds, including the infant still being breastfed by Lisbet. A civil case follows, then a criminal one. The bureaucratic machinery is calm, polite, and utterly crushing. “No one can know what goes on inside a family,” one character notes, and the film takes that uncertainty seriously, holding key facts back while giving equal weight to everyone’s competing version of the truth.

Mungiu, who has spent his career depicting people ground down by oppressive systems, pulls off something genuinely daring here: the oppressive system is progressive Norway. Its child welfare apparatus, with its breezy talk of trauma and best interests, becomes the institutional force that destroys a family. The main caseworker, Gunda (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), maintains a “terrifyingly reasonable tone” while arguing there’s no inherent reason to believe a biological parent’s care is always ideal. The state’s attorney sneers. The foster care drags on for months.

And yet — and this is where Mungiu earns his reputation — he never lets the Gheorghius off the hook either. Mihai admits in his deposition to “slapping” the children. He rallies an international coalition of religious conservatives to pressure the Norwegian government. He is, as one review put it, “a wronged man just as often as he is in the wrong.” The film’s quietly devastating argument is that what Norway is really enforcing isn’t child safety so much as cultural conformity — the same assimilation pressure that has historically been used to “civilize” Indigenous populations like the Sámi — just dressed up in the language of progressive values.

It wouldn’t take much for this material to tip into right-wing culture-war fantasy, and there are moments, particularly when the sneering prosecutor is onscreen, where it does tilt that direction. But Mungiu is too intelligent a filmmaker to leave it there. Both sides are full of people who, in their good intentions, cannot conceive for a moment that they might be biased. The film asks its audience to sit in that discomfort rather than escape it.

Stan Reconnects With His Romanian Roots

For Stan, the role carries a deeply personal dimension. He left Romania at around age 8 with his mother, during a period when the vast majority of the country was suffering under the economic hardship and political repression of communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. It was, as he described it at the Cannes press conference, a chaotic departure.

“I left in a very chaotic way, and I’ve really tried to educate myself about the country,” Stan told journalists on Tuesday, describing the film as having given him the chance “to rebond” with the country of his birth.

Mungiu revealed that he only began writing the script — inspired by true stories — after Stan had already agreed to take on the role. The character of Mihai required Stan to perform much of the film in Romanian, with English and Norwegian woven throughout. It’s a genuinely trilingual performance, and by all accounts it’s the best work of his career.

Reinsve, who previously co-starred with Stan in A Different Man, said the role was its own kind of challenge. “It was very scary to go into playing someone who was doing something wrong and was violent without knowing it,” she said at the press conference.

Stan was also asked about his understanding of Donald Trump following The Apprentice, which competed at Cannes in 2024. His answer was blunt. Noting that the film had faced threats similar to those experienced by late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert during Trump’s second term, Stan said simply: “We’re in a really, really bad place.”

The Performances, the Craft, the Oscar Talk

Fjord marks Mungiu’s first venture into languages other than Romanian — a significant step for a filmmaker so associated with a specific national cinema. He pulls it off. His signature style is intact: long, unbroken takes, a camera that keeps its distance, no musical score beyond occasional source music, and a narrative architecture so precisely constructed that all the major players — neighbors, teachers, lawyers, a rebellious teenager named Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen) who develops a complicated closeness to the Gheorghius’ eldest daughter — are introduced and interwoven before the 15-minute mark.

Cinematographer Vladimir Banduru captures Norway’s landscape beautifully — glaciers, lakes, the wide fjord valleys — while also conveying the suffocating smallness of a village where your neighbor is also your child’s principal, your lawyer, and the person who helped start the investigation against you.

Stan’s performance has drawn some minor quibbles — one critic noted that the prosthetic hairline used to make him look more ordinary feels overly artificial — but the consensus is that it didn’t need the gimmick anyway. The performance carries itself. Reinsve matches him, playing a woman who returned home after two decades away and finds herself a stranger in her own culture, steadfast in beliefs her neighbors find incomprehensible.

Neon has already acquired rights across the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. With Fjord competing for the Palme d’Or — the winner will be announced May 23 — and the critical reception here running extremely warm, the film is already being discussed as a frontrunner for a Best International Feature Oscar nomination. Stan himself is being mentioned as a dark horse Best Actor contender.

Mungiu has competed at Cannes four times, winning the Palme d’Or in 2007, Best Screenplay for Beyond the Hills in 2012, and Best Director for Graduation in 2016. Fjord is his first film since 2022’s R.M.N. — and if the 12-minute ovation is any indication, the wait was worth it.

“We’ve been blessed,” Mihai says early in the film, visibly uneasy with the phrase. By the end of Fjord, you understand exactly why.

The post Sebastian Stan Stuns Cannes With Fjord appeared first on Cream.

• Sebastian Stan called out Trump at a Cannes press conference for his new film Fjord
• When journalists laughed at a question about The Apprentice, Stan shot back: “It’s not a laughing matter”
• He cited media consolidation, censorship, and endless threats as signs America is “in a really, really bad place”
• Fjord earned a 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes and is considered a Palme d’Or contender
• Trump previously tried to block The Apprentice from screening at Cannes 2024, calling it “garbage” and threatening a lawsuit

Sebastian Stan wasn’t in the mood for nervous laughter. At a Cannes press conference Monday for his new film Fjord, the actor was asked about The Apprentice — his 2024 Trump biopic — and what he makes of it now that the former subject of that film has been back in the White House for over a year. The journalists in the room chuckled. Stan didn’t.

“It’s not a laughing matter, to be honest,” he said, his tone unmistakably grave. “It isn’t.”

He kept going. “I think we’re in a really, really bad place. I really do. And to be honest with you, when you’re looking at what’s happening — if we’re talking about the consolidation of the media, censorship, threats, the supposed lawsuits that seemingly never end but don’t actually go anywhere. You know, the writing was on the wall. We encountered all that with the movie.”

The Apprentice Flashback: Three Days of Uncertainty

Stan was referring to the chaos that surrounded the Ali Abbasi-directed film’s world premiere at Cannes in 2024. Trump had threatened a lawsuit before the festival, calling the movie “garbage” and “pure fiction” — and for a moment, it wasn’t clear whether the film would screen at all.

“Three days before the festival, [we were] unsure if the movie was going to play the festival,” Stan said. “So maybe people are paying attention more to that film. I think it will stand the test of time for that. But we went through all of it, right before Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert and so on. So, I wish it wasn’t like that.”

That the experience of making and releasing The Apprentice now feels like a preview of a larger pattern — the threats, the legal noise, the pressure on media — is clearly something Stan has been sitting with.

Now Back at Cannes With a Different Kind of Film

This time around, Stan is at the festival for something very different. Fjord, directed by Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, follows a devoutly religious Romanian family who have immigrated to a small Norwegian village. When bruises are discovered on their daughter’s body at school, all five of their children are removed by authorities — and what follows is a wrenching legal and emotional ordeal. Stan plays the father opposite Renate Reinsve.

The film received a 10-minute standing ovation at its Cannes premiere Monday night. That kind of reception at this festival means something, especially with this particular team attached.

Mungiu already has a Palme d’Or on his shelf — he won it in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and Fjord is his seventh film to compete at the festival. Reinsve, for her part, won the Best Actress prize here for The Worst Person in the World, and was back at Cannes just last year with Sentimental Value, which took the Grand Prix and later won the Best International Feature Oscar. The combination of those three names makes Fjord one of the most serious Palme d’Or contenders of this year’s competition.

But it was Stan’s words about America — not the film’s accolades — that the room walked away thinking about. “I wish it wasn’t like that” might be the quietest, most honest thing said at Cannes this week.

The post Sebastian Stan on Trump: ‘We’re in a Really Bad Place’ appeared first on Cream.

• Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord received the longest standing ovation of Cannes 2026 — lasting up to 12 minutes — after its world premiere
• Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve star as evangelical parents whose children are taken by Norwegian Child Services
• The film marks Mungiu’s English-language debut and his fifth time competing at Cannes
• Neon — which has backed every Palme d’Or winner since 2019 — already holds distribution rights across the US, UK, Australia and more
• Mungiu previously won the Palme d’Or in 2007, making a second win a genuine possibility this year

Cristian Mungiu may have just blown the Palme d’Or race wide open. The Romanian director’s Fjord had its world premiere at the Grand Théâtre Lumière on Monday night, and the Cannes crowd responded with the most thunderous reception any competition film has received so far this festival — a standing ovation that stretched anywhere from 10 to 12 minutes depending on who you ask, with both Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve visibly moved to tears on stage.

The film follows the Gheorghiu family — a Romanian father (Stan) and a Norwegian mother (Reinsve), both devout evangelical Christians — who relocate with their five children to the remote fjord village where the mother was born. They settle in beside the Halbergs, a neighboring family with a very different worldview, and the children of both families quickly grow close. But when the Gheorghius are suspected of disturbing behavior, Norwegian Child Services descends on their home, and what follows is a nightmare of bureaucratic overreach that strips them of their kids — teenagers, tweens, and an infant — one by one.

During the press screening earlier that afternoon, journalists could be heard gasping and laughing in disbelief as each new layer of red tape tightened around the couple. By the time the gala audience experienced it that evening, the silence in the room was total — rapt, barely breathing — right up until the final frame, when the theater erupted.

A Star-Studded Room for a Career-Defining Night

The premiere had been one of the hottest tickets of the festival. Students with Three Days in Cannes badges — distributed for the second half of the event — had been queuing outside in their gowns and tuxedos since 10 a.m., sheltering from the festival’s first rainstorm under borrowed umbrellas.

Inside, the gala audience included Sharon Stone, Carla Bruni, and Cannes jury member Demi Moore. Jordan Firstman was there fresh off the news of his debut feature Club Kid selling to A24 for $17 million. And Stellan Skarsgård made the trip to cheer on Reinsve, who played his daughter in last year’s Grand Prix winner Sentimental Value — the film that also made her a two-time Cannes favorite after her Best Actress win for The Worst Person in the World in 2021.

Stan, for his part, is no stranger to the Croisette either — he was here in 2024 for The Apprentice, his portrayal of a young Donald Trump. But this feels like a different kind of moment.

Why This Could Be Mungiu’s Second Palme

Fjord is also a landmark in another sense: it’s Mungiu’s first English-language film, and his first feature since the 2022 drama R.M.N. He’s competed in Cannes four times now, and he’s never left empty-handed — winning the Palme d’Or in 2007 for the Communist-era abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Best Screenplay in 2012 for Beyond the Hills, and Best Director in 2016 for Graduation. A second Palme would put him in rare company.

The film’s distributor adds another layer of intrigue to its awards prospects. Neon acquired rights to Fjord — covering the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand — a full year before its Cannes debut. The company has backed the Palme d’Or winner every single year since 2019: Parasite, Titane, Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall, Anora, and this year’s It Was Just an Accident. They also have Hope and Paper Tiger premiering at this year’s festival. Whatever Neon touches at Cannes lately seems to turn to gold — and they got to Fjord early.

The jury hands out the trophies on Saturday. After Monday night, it’s hard to imagine them not having a very long conversation about this one.

The post Fjord Gets Cannes’ Biggest Standing Ovation Yet appeared first on Cream.

• Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord premiered in Competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival to strong reviews
• Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve star as Romanian-Norwegian parents accused of child abuse in Norway
• The film marks Mungiu’s first feature set outside Romania, shot on location in a Norwegian fjord town
• NEON will release Fjord in U.S. theaters later this year
• Mungiu previously won the Palme d’Or in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

Cristian Mungiu has never been a filmmaker who makes things easy for his audience — and with Fjord, which world premiered in Competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, he’s made something that might be his most genuinely unsettling work in years. Not because it’s dark, exactly. Because it refuses to let you off the hook.

Sebastian Stan — bald, rigid, barely making eye contact at parties — plays Mihai Gheorghiu, a Romanian software engineer who has relocated his family of seven to a scenic fjord community in Norway after the death of his parents. His wife Lisbet, played by Norway’s Renate Reinsve in what critics are already calling a career-high performance, grew up nearby. On paper, this is a homecoming. In practice, it becomes a slow-motion collision between two entirely different ideas of what a good life looks like.

The Gheorghius are devoutly Evangelical Christians. Strict ones. Daily Bible study, no cellphones, no video games, no secular music. Mihai runs the household on a point system and doesn’t spare the occasional slap when he feels his children have earned one. In Romania, where he comes from, that’s not unusual. In Norway — one of the world’s consistently happiest countries with some of the most progressive child welfare laws on earth — it is very much a problem.

When their eldest daughter Elia (Vanessa Ceban) shows up to gym class with bruises on her body, the school’s child protection team moves fast. All five Gheorghiu children — including a newborn who still breastfeeds — are removed from the home while investigators determine whether abuse has taken place. Mihai admits to “slapping” the children. The state sees no distinction between that and hitting. He does. And so the war begins.

A Culture Clash That Refuses to Pick a Side

What makes Fjord so disquieting — and so accomplished — is that Mungiu genuinely doesn’t tip his hand. He’s not making a film about the evils of religious conservatism, nor is he making a persecution drama that asks you to root for the family against an overreaching state. He’s doing something harder: building a scenario where every party has a point, and every party is also, in some way, wrong.

The children’s testimony, which becomes the most damning evidence against their father, may have been the result of a language-related miscommunication. The child welfare workers who enter Lisbet’s home and calmly tell her they’ll be leaving with all of her children say, with total sincerity, “We’re here to help.” Both of those things can be true at once. That tension is where Fjord lives for its entire two-and-a-half-hour runtime, and Mungiu holds it without flinching.

As the case grows into something larger — Mihai begins posting emotional YouTube videos calling for global solidarity from fellow Evangelicals, whipping up conservative protests across Europe — the film asks an uncomfortable question about what happens when someone who may have genuinely wronged their children is also genuinely being persecuted for their beliefs. The courtroom scenes, critics note, occasionally over-explain what the earlier scenes had left beautifully ambiguous. But even there, Mungiu is working at a level most filmmakers can’t reach.

Stan, last seen at Cannes for The Apprentice, gives a performance that is almost aggressively unsympathetic — and that’s entirely the point. Mihai is a wronged man and a man in the wrong, sometimes simultaneously. He’s stiff, joyless, visibly uncomfortable even saying the words “we’ve been blessed” to new colleagues. Yet when the camera holds on him as his children are taken from his home, something real and devastating breaks through. Reinsve, meanwhile, plays Lisbet like a shaken willow — a woman who returned to her homeland only to find she no longer belongs to it, her secular Norwegian roots now buried under two decades of religious traditionalism that her neighbors resent her for.

Mungiu at His Most Precise

This is Mungiu’s fifth film to compete at Cannes — his first was 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which took the Palme d’Or in 2007 — and his first set entirely outside Romania. That shift, it turns out, suits him. So much of his work has circled the friction between Eastern and Western Europe, between tradition and progress, between the individual and the institution, that dropping his lens into Norway feels less like a departure than a natural expansion.

Cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru, who also shot R.M.N. and Graduation, frames the Norwegian landscape in sleety, silvery blues that never quite warm up. Wide, unbroken takes capture the whole community at once — neighbors who are also employers, teachers, lawyers, and potential adversaries, all crammed into the same expansive frame. There are actual avalanches in the background of several scenes, gathering and tumbling down the hill behind the local school. Nobody is particularly concerned. It’s the human nature inside those walls, Mungiu suggests, that’s the real disaster in progress.

The supporting cast holds its own throughout. Markus Scarth Tønseth plays Mats, the next-door neighbor and school principal whose friendly demeanor barely conceals his discomfort with the family beside him. His stepdaughter Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen) forms a fast, intense bond with Elia — the kind of closeness that Mihai, who teaches his children that a family can only begin with a man and a woman, watches with visible unease. Lisa Carlehed is particularly fine as the neighbor-turned-lawyer who takes on Lisbet’s case after the first attorney quits in frustration.

Fjord is the kind of film that stays with you not because it answers anything, but because it keeps asking. “What does it mean to be a good neighbor?” is the question Mungiu keeps circling, in a world where everyone — the state, the church, the parents, the children, even the audience — believes they already know. NEON will release it in U.S. theaters later this year. Whatever your politics, clear your schedule.

The post Cannes 2026: Sebastian Stan Shines in Mungiu’s ‘Fjord’ appeared first on Cream.

• Matt Reeves confirmed Scarlett Johansson is joining The Batman: Part II as Gilda Dent via a haunting GIF on X
• Sebastian Stan will play Harvey Dent, the DA who becomes Two-Face, and says the film will “surprise a lot of people”
• Six returning cast members were also confirmed: Pattinson, Wright, Serkis, Farrell, Lawson, and Perez-Abraham
• The full ensemble now includes Charles Dance, Barry Keoghan, and Jeffrey Wright alongside the new additions
• The Batman: Part II is set for release on October 1, 2027, with production now underway in London

Matt Reeves is done keeping secrets. After years of near-silence on The Batman: Part II, the director has spent the last few days turning his X account into a casting announcement machine — and the biggest names he’s dropped so far are Scarlett Johansson and Sebastian Stan.

Reeves kicked things off by posting a moody GIF of Johansson from her 2013 sci-fi thriller Under the Skin, her face reflected in a car’s rearview mirror as shadows fall across her and blurred lights streak past. The caption: “Next exit, Gotham… Welcome.” It’s spare, atmospheric, and very on-brand for the filmmaker who turned Gotham City into a rain-soaked fever dream in 2022. The GIF didn’t name her character, but multiple outlets have confirmed Johansson will play Gilda Dent — wife of District Attorney Harvey Dent and a character with deep roots in Batman lore.

https://x.com/mattreevesLA/status/2054961650416189704

Stan’s welcome came shortly after, with Reeves confirming the Thunderbolts* star is in a “Gotham state of mind.” He’ll play Harvey Dent himself — the idealistic DA whose tragic transformation into the coin-flipping villain Two-Face is one of the most iconic arcs in the Batman universe. The last time we saw Dent on the big screen was Aaron Eckhart’s version in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight back in 2008. Stan’s take promises to be something different.

Speaking to Deadline from the Cannes Film Festival, where he’s promoting his film Fjord, Stan didn’t hold back on his excitement. “It’s going to blow people away. It’s going to surprise a lot of people, I think, too,” he said. He called the film “a really ambitious movie” and a “challenge, like everything else,” adding that working with Reeves has been a long-held dream. “He’s been one of my favorites for a long, long time.”

Who Is Gilda Dent — and Why Does She Matter?

For casual fans, Gilda Dent might be a new name. For comics readers, she’s anything but. In Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s beloved Batman: The Long Halloween — widely considered one of the greatest Batman stories ever told — Gilda is at the center of Harvey’s world as Gotham starts to crumble around him. She watches her husband get pulled deeper into the city’s darkness, and her own role in the story takes a turn that reframes everything. Reeves has mined The Long Halloween before; the first film borrowed its serial-killer-mystery structure directly from that source material. Going deeper into Gilda’s story for the sequel feels like a natural, and potentially devastating, extension of that.

Johansson, who spent over a decade in the MCU as Black Widow, was first reported to be in final negotiations for the role back in December. She was expected to complete work on The Exorcist before heading to the Batman set. Now it’s official.

Charles Dance rounds out the Dent family as Christopher Dent, Harvey’s father — a casting detail that adds another layer of intrigue to what’s shaping up to be a very family-focused sequel.

The Full Cast Is Taking Shape

The day before the Johansson and Stan reveals, Reeves had already been busy — posting GIFs to confirm six returning cast members. Robert Pattinson is back as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Jeffrey Wright returns as Jim Gordon, Andy Serkis is back as Alfred (who took quite the beating in the first film), and Colin Farrell reprises Oz Cobb/The Penguin, fresh off his acclaimed run in HBO’s The Penguin series. Rounding out the returning players are Jayme Lawson as mayor Bella Réal and Gil Perez-Abraham as Officer Martinez — two characters whose returns will have fans of the first film quietly pumped.

Barry Keoghan is also expected to return as The Joker, though Reeves hasn’t officially posted his confirmation yet.

The full confirmed cast now stands at: Robert Pattinson, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Colin Farrell, Andy Serkis, Jeffrey Wright, Charles Dance, Barry Keoghan, Jayme Lawson, and Gil Perez-Abraham. The script, co-written by Reeves and Mattson Tomlin, is being kept tightly under wraps.

What We Know (and What We’re Guessing) About the Story

Plot details are locked down hard, but the casting itself tells a story. Reports suggest the film will center on Batman, Harvey Dent, and Commissioner Gordon forming an uneasy alliance to hunt a serial killer while also taking on Gotham’s entrenched crime families — a structure that draws heavily from The Long Halloween. Two-Face, Hush, a Holiday Killer, and Phantasm have all been floated as potential villains. The film’s working title, “Semper Vigilans,” has also set off speculation about the Court of Owls entering the picture.

Then there’s Pattinson, who told an interviewer earlier this year that the sequel will be a “really different type of Batman movie” — which is saying something, given how different the first one already was. “The script is so good,” he said. “Hopefully, people will be really pleasantly surprised by it.”

Reeves recently confirmed the film has a wintery setting — that snowy Batmobile photo that broke the internet a few weeks ago wasn’t just aesthetic flex — which has some corners of the fandom whispering about Mr. Freeze. Whether that pans out or not, the vibe is clear: Reeves is building something colder, darker, and more complicated than what came before.

Production is now officially underway in London. The Batman: Part II opens in theaters on October 1, 2027. And if Sebastian Stan’s confidence is any indicator, the wait is going to be worth it.

The post The Batman: Part II Confirms Johansson, Stan and More appeared first on Cream.

• Sebastian Stan has officially started training for his role in The Batman: Part 2, per a new video from his trainer
• Stan is widely reported to be playing Harvey Dent / Two-Face in Matt Reeves’ sequel
• Personal trainer Jason Walsh shared the clip, calling Stan “one of the kindest clients we’ve ever had”
• Robert Pattinson, Scarlett Johansson, Colin Farrell, and Charles Dance are also in the cast
• The film is set for a US release on October 1, 2027

Sebastian Stan is putting in the work. A new video from his personal trainer confirms that the Avengers: Doomsday star has begun training for The Batman: Part 2 — and based on what we can already see, Harvey Dent is going to be absolutely jacked.

The clip, shared by trainer Jason Walsh on Instagram, shows Stan mixing up a protein shake with a simple, loaded message overlaid on screen: “And so it begins… Training Sebastian Stan for Batman.” Walsh’s caption left no room for ambiguity either. “Can’t explain just how excited we are to be training Sebastian for Batman,” he wrote. “This is going to be epic! Sebastian is one of the kindest clients we’ve ever had the opportunity to work with.”

Stan hasn’t officially confirmed his role, but multiple reports have placed him as Harvey Dent — Gotham’s idealistic district attorney who, in DC lore, eventually becomes the villainous Two-Face. On paper, a DA doesn’t need to bench press anything. But if Matt Reeves is building toward a version of Two-Face who can actually go toe-to-toe with Robert Pattinson’s Dark Knight, the gym time makes a lot of sense. The Batman made relatively short work of The Riddler in the first film — a physical, credible threat in the sequel would be a different kind of challenge for Bruce Wayne entirely.

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A Cast That’s Quietly Become Stacked

Stan won’t be the only Marvel alumnus stepping into Gotham. Scarlett Johansson — the MCU’s Natasha Romanoff — has also joined the sequel, reportedly as Gilda Dent, Harvey’s wife. It’s a fascinating pairing, and the fact that two of Marvel’s most recognizable faces are now headlining a DC project says a lot about where the industry’s walls have fallen.

The returning cast is equally formidable. Pattinson is back as Bruce Wayne, Colin Farrell reprises his scene-stealing turn as Oswald “Oz” Cobb / The Penguin, Jeffrey Wright returns as Commissioner Gordon, and Andy Serkis is back as Alfred. Variety has reported that Barry Keoghan is also likely to return as the Joker. And Game of Thrones legend Charles Dance has joined the fold, reportedly as Charles Dent — Harvey’s father — which adds a whole other layer of intrigue to that storyline.

Reeves is directing again from a script he co-wrote with Mattson Tomlin, and he’s already been teasing the film’s tone. First-look images he shared recently suggested a wintry Gotham — darker, colder, more atmospheric than before.

Pattinson has been candid about how much he loves where the story is going. “I mean, the script is so good,” he’s said. “The first one was like a little bit of a different type of Batman movie, and this is like really a different type of Batman movie. I think hopefully people will be really pleasantly surprised by it. Yeah, I’m really excited.”

Will The Riddler Be Back Too?

One question fans keep asking: what about Paul Dano? The actor played Edward Nashton / The Riddler in the first film, and he’s been coy — but not dismissive — about a possible return. Speaking to Collider, Dano said, “I don’t know. Matt is so caring and obsessive in bringing such a point of view to that film, and I think he is going to again. I could not be more excited to see what he does, and I hope maybe I’ll get to dance again.”

He also revealed he knows just enough to be genuinely intrigued. “I know a very little bit about it, but what I do know, I am excited by, for sure, and I would be surprised if you wouldn’t be as well.”

And when asked about the film existing within DC Studios’ broader DCU, Dano was thoughtful: “I think what’s really interesting about those films from here on out is embracing the point of view within them, rather than trying all be similar and all be the same. So I think I’m in on bringing the point-of-view filmmaking to Gotham.”

For Marvel fans watching all of this unfold, there’s a quietly anxious subplot running underneath the excitement. Stan’s DC commitments have some wondering what that means for Bucky Barnes’ future — specifically whether the Winter Soldier survives Avengers: Doomsday, given that Secret Wars is expected to begin production soon. Nothing’s confirmed either way.

For now, though, Stan is in the gym, the protein shakes are flowing, and Gotham is getting closer. The Batman: Part 2 opens October 1, 2027.

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