'The Batman's New Joker Barry Keoghan Made A Fan Film To Play Nightwing

Actor Barry Keoghan attracted a lot of attention with his role as (according to IMDb) "Unseen Arkham Prisoner" in The Batman. A justifiably deleted scene later revealed that the character was actually the the Joker, meaning that Keoghan is following the steps of some pretty heavyweight acting legends. This must be a nerve-wracking experience -- we don't envy the next actor who'll have to play Morbius the Living Vampire, either. But, even though the Joker has proved to be the comic book character most likely to give you an Oscars and all the infuriatingly expensive extra crap that comes with it, it turns out Keoghan would rather be playing a whole other Batman character: 

Keoghan, who describes himself as "a huge fan of DC," spent a long time lobbying to play either Robin or Nightwing (the name Robin takes when his butt grows too big for that little thong). He's not just cosplaying in those pictures up there: around 2018, having already appeared in The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, Keoghan shot a fan film where he plays Nightwing, just to show that he could. He says he even "learned some martial arts and gymnastics" to make the part more convincing. In a 2017 interview, he explained his fascination: "I know everyone wants to be Batman, but there's something interesting in Robin. He's young, he's ... he's got these ... detective skills, like he's, uh, you know, he's ... yeah." He could barely speak due to the excitement! (Skip to 6:05 below.) 

So it's kind of tragic that, well, look at him. Dude's perfect for the Joker. He's got the ideal head shape and mouth to face ratio for the character. In a behind the scenes clip from the making of his Nightwing short film (which as far as we can tell was never posted online), he can't help slipping into a spot on Joker laugh and actually has to say, "I'm actually Nightwing, I'm not the Joker." 

Now that he's officially the Joker, the chances of Keoghan ever playing Nightwing or Robin in a movie are pretty much nonexistent. That's not the only superhero he's a fan of, though: in 2015, he made a short film where he plays Spider-Man and posted it on YouTube only a month after tweeting "I WANT THISSSS!!!" at Sony's announcement that they were looking for a younger actor for the role. (A true Spider-Man fan wouldn't have left the hyphen out of the title of the short, though.) 

You can tell he really wanted that part, too. If the pattern holds, this means he'll definitely end up playing a Spidey villain in the future. Here's hoping it's not Morbius the Living Vampire. 

Follow Maxwell Yezpitelok's heroic effort to read and comment on every '90s Superman comic at Superman86to99.tumblr.com. 

Top image: Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Comics