In news that likely will surprise no one, except maybe Michael Caine, Philip Seymour Hoffman says he’s never even been approached about playing The Penguin in the sequel to The Dark Knight.

“No one has talked to me about it ever — never,” Hoffman tells MTV’s Splash Page. “It happened, like, five years ago, too. It was a rumor back then and it’s still a rumor. [laughs] It’s just in the press. It’s funny.”

But that long-swirling rumor received a boost earlier this week when Caine, who plays Alfred in the Batman movies, related to MTV a conversation he had with an unnamed Warner Bros. executive:

“I was with [a Warner Bros.] executive and I said, ‘Are we going to make another one?’ They said yeah. I said, ‘How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says ‘I’ll tell you how you top Heath — Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin.’ I said, ‘S–t, they’ve done it again!’” [Laughs]

In Caine’s defense, he didn’t actually say that Depp and Hoffman had been signed. The studio executive’s response can be viewed as describing a “what if” scenario.

Earlier this month, Depp said that he hadn’t been cast for the movie.

It should be pointed out that director Christopher Nolan hasn’t agreed to return for a third film, and no script has been written.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 at 10:09 am and is filed under DC Comics, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.