Michael Keaton is set to once again to slide back into his iconic big-screen role as Bruce Wayne — this time as the newest addition to the cast of the upcoming Batgirl movie bound for HBO Max.
While the details of Keaton's role are being kept under wraps for now, he is rumored to be suiting up as Batman again after 30 years, reprising his role as Bruce Wayne and his crime-fighting alter ego, which he originally played in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. It has already been confirmed that he's playing the Dark Knight alongside Ben Affleck's version in the upcoming film The Flash, starring Ezra Miller.
For the HBO Max movie, Keaton will join a cast headed up by Leslie Grace as Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl), who in DC’s original comic book canon is the daughter of Gotham police commissioner Jim Gordon. Filling the elder Gordon’s role will be J.K. Simmons, who first portrayed Jim Gordon in 2017’s Justice League. Brendan Fraser is on board as Firefly, the movie’s pyrotechnically gifted villain, with Bad Boys for Life veterans Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah sharing the directors’ chair. Batgirl already has begun production in London.
Keaton broke what had become an extended dearth of Bruce Wayne on the big screen when he teamed with director Tim Burton to revive one of DC’s most beloved heroes, beginning in 1989 with Batman and followed four years later by the Burton-helmed sequel, 1992’s Batman Returns.
Before Keaton’s first Batman movie, it had been more than two decades since Gotham City’s savior had gotten a feature-length film all to himself, with Adam West (Batman) and Burt Ward (Robin) bringing their TV series characters to life on the big screen in 1966 with 20th Century Fox’s Batman.
