Almost exactly one month ago, Beauty and the Beast star Josh Gad tweeted a photo of The Penguin, the classic villain from Batman’s Rogues Gallery. Speculation ramped up about the actor potentially playing that character opposite Ben Affleck’s Dark Knight in Matt Reeves’ upcoming movie The Batman, but Gad threw some water on his own fire by saying that he was “just having some fun” when he posted the picture and there was nothing to it.
But now it appears that there may have actually been something to it after all, because Gad has tweeted a photo of him meeting with some influential people at DC Films and the rumor has begun anew.
Here’s the first photo Gad tweeted last month:
— Josh Gad (@joshgad) May 2, 2017
The fact that Gad chose an image in which Oswald Cobblepot is saying “Make me!” seems significant – as in, “Hey DC: make me the new Penguin!” But when MTV asked him what the deal was with the photo a little while later, Gad demurred:
“Just having some fun! That’s it. Really, I promise. There’s nothing to…there’s no ‘there’ there. I promise you.”
But this morning’s tweet seems to heavily contradict that message:
Nothing to see here… pic.twitter.com/3wIc1Fj4Wr
— Josh Gad (@joshgad) June 2, 2017
That’s Gad standing next to Geoff Johns and Jon Berg, two of the people in charge of guiding the DC Extended Universe for Warner Bros., and he’s holding a Batman comic in his hand with the Penguin on the cover. The way I see it, there are four options for what this could mean.
Option one: this could be nothing more than Gad stopping by DC’s offices to troll the internet. He’s obviously very aware of the response something like this would get, based on the hubbub that went up after his previous photo and all of the attention his videos received in which he attempted to coax information about Star Wars: The Last Jedi out of his Murder on the Orient Express co-star Daisy Ridley.
Option two: this was actually a real meeting to discuss Gad actually playing The Penguin in The Batman movie. It seems like he’d actually be a decent choice to play the role, and unless he’s looking to immerse himself in a deathly serious version of the character, I feel like he’d almost certainly be able to add a speck of fun to the DCEU.
Option three: our own Peter Sciretta thinks this could be an even more elaborate troll from Gad in which he might be playing a singing, dancing penguin in Mary Poppins Returns. That would be a pretty brilliant move on Gad’s part, and considering his history with Disney, it definitely seems plausible that he’d be involved with one of their big holiday releases next year.
Option four: the same general vibe as option one, but Gad is practicing his Photoshop skills here and never actually went to DC in the first place.
In case this meeting actually happened and the actor is cast in the DCEU, what do you think about Josh Gad as The Penguin?
The post Josh Gad Has Met With DC – Is He Playing The Penguin After All? appeared first on /Film.
