J.K. Simmons Talks More About Playing Commissioner Gordon in JUSTICE LEAGUE and Beyond
Early rumors about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice indicated that the film would take place in a world in which Batman's long-time confidant and ally Commissioner Gordon had died, but those rumors ended up not being true. To the best of my knowledge, Gordon was never mentioned in BvS, and director Zack Snyder has cast Oscar-winning actor J.K. Simmons to play the role in future films. Simmons has already briefly spoken about his take on the role, but in a new interview with DP/30 (via ComingSoon), he expounds on it a little more:
“Honestly, I don’t get started on that until June, and my part in the first one is very small. I’m excited to be playing that iconic character in that iconic series; I was trying to think of a different adjective but they’re both iconic. That’s a couple of movies down the road still, I’m focused on what I’m doing now and then another one, and then I’ll worry about how I can honor that character and that franchise.”
“With these big superhero movies, everybody is so tight lipped about everything, there’s a certain amount of just going on faith. They asked me to come in and meet with Zack Snyder and we had a great meeting. I’m a big fan of what he’s done and we hit it off and he asked me to do the guy. Really, I’m going into a thing that hopefully will be two, three, four…maybe more movies for me, and my part in the first one is really very small, but obviously we know who the guy is. We know his whole backstory, based on the comic book. So, I’m just gonna finish doing my research on that, and probably not watch the other actors who have played the part, because that is just kind of intimidating honestly and I don’t think I would find that to be productive. So I’ll just do my take.”
It sounds like anyone who's really excited to see Simmons take on the role will have to keep that excitement alive for years to come, because by his own admission, he won't have a very big part in Justice League. That's fine with me — I'm probably not alone in hoping that he has a a large part in Ben Affleck's upcoming solo Batman movie, and the idea of seeing Affleck and Simmons working together as those characters sounds very appealing.