It’s official. Warner Bros. has cast Alec Baldwin to play Thomas Wayne in the upcoming Joker origin film.
The progress of the Joker standalone film has been closely monitored by Bounding Into Comics over the last few months. Rumors of an angry Jared Leto having to share the role with another actor surfaced, the casting of Robert De Niro, as well as the rumor of Thomas Wayne appearing in the film.
The movie’s production should begin very soon – as it’s set to start filming in September. One thing that has made this film stand apart from other modern comic book films is its modest budget. Right now Warner Bros. has reportedly set the film to be made for about fifty-five million dollars. While in years past that would be megabucks blockbuster funding, it’s really pretty low when you compare it to other DC and Marvel films. Those films typically see budgets balloon into the hundreds of millions, sometimes just for marketing alone.
As the movie explores the origins of Batman’s arch rival, what we could expect to see from Thomas Wayne is yet to be known. Scott Silver and Todd Phillips wrote the script.
Thomas Wayne, father, family man, and industrialist of Gotham City, was introduced in 1939 in Detective Comics #33 in a storyline that looked at the origins of Batman. Before his untimely demise at the hands of a mugging gone wrong, he was known to be one of the best doctors in the city. Because of his and mother Martha’s murder that night, Bruce Wayne was forever changed and was catapulted into being the Batman as an adult.
This won’t be Alec Balwin’s first dive into the comic book world. Back in the early 90s, he played The Shadow. A character that ironically shares quite a few similarities with Batman. But unlike the Caped Crusader, he was a criminal who became reformed and now fights crime. [easyazon_link identifier=”B0791ZL2WY” locale=”US” tag=”boundingintocomics-20″]Get a copy of The Shadow here![/easyazon_link]
The Joker origin film has a star-studded cast, with a modest budget. Could this movie give DC the leg up they need?