Who the heck is Brandon Sklenar? If you’ve been surfing around comic book Twitter at all the past few weeks, you’ll find his name coming up over and over again in relation to a very specific part. And it seems possible that James Gunn is actually considering him for it.
The role is DCU Batman, the yet-to-be cast important role in James Gunn’s new universe. Possibly the most important, depending on where you come down in the great Superman vs. Batman debate. And before you say it, no, we are past the point where Robert Pattinson’s ‘The Batman’ Batman is ever going to come to the DCU.
Sklenar has been fancast as Bruce Wayne for months, albeit I’m not exactly sure where all this started. There’s been a raging debate among fans whether he’d be good or bad for the role. Sklenar himself is not quiet about it, and has made it clear his ultimate fantasy is to, in fact, be Batman, similar to what we’ve heard from Reacher’s Alan Ritchson.
Fancasting does not tend to work out for almost any role, especially superhero projects, but in the DCU? Things feel a bit different. The most prominent example of this was Aaron Pierre making a splash in his Netflix movie Rebel Ridge, fans saying he’d be a great John Stewart Green Lantern, and a month later, he was.
In a recent Peacemaker podcast, James Gunn made some eyebrows raise when he revealed he was watching 1923, the Paramount Plus Taylor Sheridan series, a highly-scored prequel to Yellowstone starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. However, it also stars none other than Brandon Sklenar, who shows up in every episode playing Spencer Dutton.
This new podcast bit is not actually new news, given that it was recorded a long while ago, and back in June, Gunn said that Sklenar was “great” in 1923, but it’s a reminder that he’s on Gunn’s radar. Gunn said specifically he watched Milly Alcock in House of the Dragon which eventually led to her series of auditions where she ultimately got the part. It’s of course not uncommon to like people in something and then have then come in, or cast them, but…that may be what’s happening with Sklenar here, though Gunn has recently indicated the movie is not in the casting phase yet.
I don’t know what to make of Sklenar or all this hype about him. I haven’t seen 1923, admittedly, but I did watch the rather good horror movie Drop, where he co-starred opposite The White Lotus’ Meghann Fahy (who ironically starred with Milly Alcock in Sirens; the connections begin to form!). He was good, but I still don’t quite get the intense fervor around him specifically when it comes to this role. I think some of the best castings are more obscure and less predictable like say, Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne, and we know how that worked out. We’ll see if Gunn agrees with the fancast again in the future.
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