The worst-kept secret in Gotham is now officially not a secret. Sebastian Stan, in an interview with French publication Le Journal du Dimanche, confirmed what had been widely assumed, occasionally denied, and had been casually hovering around the internet for months: he is playing Harvey Dent in Matt Reeves’s The Batman: Part II.
Stan’s confirmation comes after months of speculation, with fans initially assuming that he was playing Harvey Dent and Scarlett Johansson was playing Gilda Dent. However, that theory took a 180-degree turn when he shaved his head for Fjord, leading many to believe that Sebastian Stan was playing Victor Zsasz and Brian Tyree Henry was playing Harvey Dent.
He also talked about filming the other enormous comic book film he is part of. Avengers: Doomsday, as has been previously confirmed by Alan Cumming, was filmed without a script, and sometimes without anybody else.
“We didn’t even have a script,” Stan told the magazine. “We just shot scattered scenes here and there. It’s a totally different way of working, continuous, constantly evolving. The producers didn’t want us reading the whole thing, specifically so journalists couldn’t corner us with questions.” He said it with a laugh. Fifteen years of Marvel discipline will do that.
Quickly shifting the focus to The Batman, instead of Doomsday, Stan added, “I can’t say anything about The Batman: Part II either, Matt Reeves’s film where I play Harvey Dent. Part of the beauty of this job is getting to be part of projects on that scale, the kind I genuinely love as a viewer, too. Right now, I really want to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, it looks incredible.”
The conditions Stan describes for Doomsday are genuinely extraordinary, and Alan Cumming, who reprises his role as Nightcrawler from X2 in Doomsday, previously touched on the topic too, talking about his experience of filming the Marvel tentpole.
Cumming told Gold Derby, “I did the entire film in isolation,” adding that the production relied heavily on green screens, digital effects, and something particularly surreal: fake names assigned to characters during shooting, making it nearly impossible to know which co-stars were involved in any given scene. “I don’t know who I was acting with half the time,” he admitted.
He also credits Marvel/Bucky Barnes with giving him a young fanbase that’s “growing up alongside him,” in contrast to a slightly pointed remark from director Radu Jude about Marvel drawing in kids rather than adults..
The Batman 2 comes out in theatres on February 16, 2028, while Avengers: Doomsday will be released this December alongside Dune 3.
Source: Le Journal du dimanche