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Riddle me this, riddle me that. Who’s afraid of being typecast in genre superhero parts and never being allowed to make respectable cinema alongside auteurs such as French filmmaker Olivier Assayas? Certainly not Paul Dano, who took time out from promoting his work in Assayas’s new comedy thriller The Wizard of the Kremlin to express interest in reprising his role as Edward Nashton aka the Riddler from the Matt Reeves movie The Batman.
When French chat show Clique TV asked if Dano would do a Riddler television show in the vein of The Penguin, the actor responded in the affirmative. “Why not, if we can do something really good?,” he answered, before expounding on that qualification. “You’ve got to keep the bar high.”
He’s right about the high bar set by The Batman and The Penguin. The Batman was a hit with audiences and critics; we here at Den of Geek called it “one of the best superhero movies ever made.” Although The Penguin had a more mixed critical reception, it was nominated for several awards and netted a Primetime Emmy for Cristin Milioti. Even in an age of superhero saturation, Reeves, his stars Dano and Robert Pattinson, and their co-creators managed to make something fresh and special with The Batman.
For Dano, The Batman reached that level of quality because of the psychological complexity of its characters. Where most depictions of the Riddler imagine him as a genius who just wants to test his wits against the Caped Crusader, Dano sees a deeper connection between the hero and the villain. “This was a guy who was an orphan like Batman,” he explained to Click TV, “who had a really traumatic upbringing and was obviously unwell. What I really liked about this was what he thought was his connection to the Batman… I liked that twist on it, that the villain saw himself in line with the hero.”
As his answer suggests, Dano has put a great deal of thought into the construction of Nashton. In fact, he developed the character so much that he also wrote a six-issue prequel comic for DC, illustrated by Stevan Subic. That story showed how Ashton was orphaned and how he came to hold the Wayne family and the gangster Carmine Falcone responsible for the death of his parents, a belief that eventually drives him to become the Riddler.
The series would provide a strong foundation for a Riddler show, should Reeves and WB ever call for one. However, such a show seems unlikely at the moment. Even though the first part came out in 2022, The Batman: Part II is still in preproduction, with major stars such as Scarlett Johansson and Sebastian Stan just now being cast. Furthermore, the mainline DC Universe has shifted since the release of the first film, and DC Studios head James Gunn and Peter Safran have several unrelated Bat-projects in the works, including the movie Batman: The Brave and the Bold.
Still, Gunn has been very open about loving Reeves’s work and insisting that he’ll green-light projects if they have a quality script. Thanks to Dano, a potential Riddler project has already solved the two biggest problems facing a new show, providing both a great story and a compelling star.
The Batman: Part II releases in theaters on October 1, 2027.
The post The Batman: Paul Dano Wants to Return as the Riddler on TV appeared first on Den of Geek.
