Matt Reeves Shot Fake Scenes For THE BATMAN to Protect a Big DC Character Reveal

I get into some big spoiler territory here, so if you haven’t seen the film yet, don’t read it.

It turns out that The Batman director Matt Reeves ended up shooting fake scenes to keep the identity of one actor’s big character reveal a secret.

It’s not uncommon for filmmakers to do this, especially with big comic book movies like this. Marvel Studios does it all the time to keep certain things a secret until a movie is released.

In this instance, Reeves was looking to keep Barry Keoghan’s real character a secret. In the marketing for the film, we were made to believe that he was playing GCPD officer Stanley Merkel. There were set photos that leaked featuring Keoghan in this role and there was an “official confirmation” made during DC’s FanDome event.

While talking to IGN about the fake scenes, Reeves said:

"When you're making a movie like this, you want it to be different, you want people to feel like they're having a special experience. So we started thinking what we could do to throw people off that scent. This idea of making [Keoghan] Stanley Merkel was exactly that, because the police force is actually a big part of the story so it seemed credible that we could be doing that."

But, that’s not who Keoghan is playing in the film. In reality, Keoghan made a cameo at the end of the film as The Joker and he and The Riddler have a fun little exchange while locked up in Arkham Asylum. This is definitely a very different version of The Joker, whose face is very much teased, but he does look pretty jacked up.

Keoghan taking on the role of The Joker did eventually leak out before the movie was released, but it will still be a surprise for a lot of people who managed to steer clear of those leaks.