Every single person on the entire planet knows that Phillip Seymour Hoffman is going to play The Penguin in Batman 3.

True, there isn’t a script for Batman 3 yet, Christopher Nolan hasn’t even admitted that he wants to make a Batman 3 three yet and for all we know the movie’s going to be about Crazy Quilt or Mr Polka Dot instead of The Penguin. But, that said, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is definitely going to play The Penguin in Batman 3.

Except Phillip Seymour Hoffman doesn’t really think that’s going to happen. In a recent interview Hoffman claimed that he doesn’t think he’d be a good Penguin and that someone else should probably do it instead. Which, we think, is a coded message to say that he thinks he’d be a brilliant Penguin in Batman 3 and that he definitely wants to do it. Tell your friends. It’s official!

Even though The Dark Knight is second only to Titanic in terms of box office grosses, you wouldn’t want to be invited to play a Batman villain in its sequel, would you. Just look what the horrific curse of Batman has done to the acting community already.

Heath Ledger, obviously, played The Joker in The Dark Knight and wound up dead, but that’s not all. Cesar Romero played The Joker in the 1960s Batman TV series and he died just 24 years afterwards at the tragically young age of 86. Worse still, Jack Nicholson played The Joker in the 1989 Tim Burton Batman movie and he’s ended up being quite old.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman knows this only too well, and the last thing he wants to do is be dead or old one day, which is why he’s doing his best to distance himself from rumours linking him to the role of The Penguin in Batman 3.

Ever since The Dark Knight was released, there have been three main rumours about Batman 3 – 1) Johnny Depp would be the Riddler, 2) Cher would be Catwoman and 3) Phillip Seymour Hoffman would be The Penguin.

Given that nobody – not even, it seems, Christopher Nolan – knows what’s going to even happen in Batman 3 yet, these rumours have seemed unlikely at best or, in Cher’s case, freakish and somewhat libido-dulling. And, just to make that perfectly clear, Phillip Seymour Hoffman has finally weighed in on the possibility of playing The Penguin, as Digital Spy reports:

“To be quite honest, I don’t know whether I would be a good Penguin. I think I’m more interested in seeing someone else do it.”

Now, Hollywood is a funny place, so we’re taking Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s statement as meaning one of three things:

1 - Phillip Seymour Hoffman knows that he’s a favourite for The Penguin in Batman 3 and he’s distancing himself deliberately so that producers ramp up their fee to lure him in.

2 - Phillip Seymour Hoffman genuinely doesn’t want to be The Penguin because he’d much rather make thematically-impenetrable Charlie Kaufman movies for the rest of his life.

3 - Phillip Seymour Hoffman is definitely definitely going to play The Penguin in Batman 3. Definitely.

Oh, who are we kidding? It’s the last one, isn’t it.

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