In a new interview hyping the return of Colin Farrell’s Penguin, The Batman director Matt Reeves suggested there’s little room in his vision of Gotham for “full fantastical” villains who invoke the supernatural—disappointing fans of one character in particular: the Gentleman Ghost.

Following the Gentleman Ghost’s recent appearance on Batman: Caped Crusader, SFX Magazine (via Variety and Deadline) reports, there’s been fan demand for Reeves to incorporate the relatively obscure DC Comics character into his upcoming sequel. The director, however, has other plans.

“What was important to me was to find a way to take these pop icons, these mythical characters that everybody knows, and translate it so that Gotham feels like a place in our world,” he explained to SFX Magazine. “We might push to the edge of the fantastical but we would never go into full fantastical. It’s meant to feel quite grounded. It doesn’t mean that you won’t see characters that people love. That’s exactly what we want to do. Gentleman Ghost is probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do, but there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that.”

Originally a villain facing off with Hawkman and Hawkgirl, James “Gentleman Jim” Craddock debuted in the October 1947 issue of Flash Comics as a flamboyant thief who uses parlor tricks to appear to be an untouchable spirit from beyond the grave. In later years, the character was retconned to be the true ghost of a 19th century highwayman put to death by a lynch mob. Forced to wander the Earth until the souls of his killers (who have since reincarnated as Hawkman and Hawkgirl) move onto the next plane of existence, the Gentleman Ghost passes the time harassing various superheroes of the DC universe—including Batman.

Since a live-action Batman film hasn’t pitted the character against a legitimate supernatural threat since Batman Returns (Michelle Pfeiffer’s undead/elemental take on Catwoman, opposite Danny DeVito’s black slime-spewing Penguin), the visually striking, highly entertaining Ghost feels like a welcome alternative to the street-level criminals we’ve seen in both The Batman and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Nonetheless, Reeves insists upon his “grounded” approach to the character, referring to The Penguin series as part of an “epic crime saga.”

As Reeves stated, “[The sequel is] “going to dig into the epic story about deeper corruption, and it goes into places that he couldn’t anticipate in the first one. The seeds of where this goes are all in the first movie. It expands in a way that will show you aspects of the character you never got to see.”

According to Reeves, Batman’s enemies “can’t be exorcised,” which would seem to leave out the Gentleman Ghost.  “Batman is constantly battling these forces,” he says. “But those forces can’t be entirely exorcised. So the next movie delves deeper into that.”

While we wait for Batman’s return, The Penguin debuts September 19 on HBO and Max.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.



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