Apparently, The Batman director Matt Reeves had a very specific vision in mind for his version of The Riddler - something akin to the Zodiac Killer. No, no, not Ted Cruz - we'd probably cast him as The Penguin first - the actual real-life Zodiac Killer, the one who murdered (at least) five victims in the San Fransisco Bay Area from 1968-69, who had complex ciphers printed in local newspapers hinting that he was collecting his victims to be his slaves in the afterlife.

Reeves explained this in an interview with MovieMaker:

"The premise of the movie is that the Riddler is kind of molded in an almost Zodiac Killer sort of mode, and is killing very prominent figures in Gotham, and they are the pillars of society. These are supposedly legitimate figures. It begins with the mayor, and then it escalates from there. And in the wake of the murders, he reveals the ways in which these people were not everything they said they were, and you start to realize there's some kind of association. And so just like Woodward and Bernstein, you've got Gordon and Batman trying to follow the clues to try and make sense of this thing in a classic kind-of-detective story way.

"I wanted bits of those names because I wanted the conspiracy to come with that forcefulness of history and believability for me."

This serial killer theming pairs perfectly with how Reeves envisioned his Batman: A classic noir detective reminiscent of the original Batman comic, released in 1939. As Robert Pattinson put it:

"In the first meeting, he was saying, we want to lean into the 'world's greatest detective aspect,' and be a detective noir movie, and, you know, normally when directors say that, they just do likea mood board, and it's just about the imagery. But I read the script, and it is! It's a detective movie. It happens all the time in the graphic novels, but it's always kind of on the backburner in the movies."

Pattinson and Reeves were on the same page about many things, which was why he was the perfect casting choice, according to producer Dylan Clark:

"We're like, he's just making insanely bold choices, this guy. He went from being, very early on, in a giant franchise where he was a poster boy, to really pushing himself as an actor, working with incredibly talented directors and pushing himself all the way. And we just respected that."

You can see what all of these meticulously detailed choices become when Mat Reeves' The Batman hits theaters on March 4.

Tags: Mat Reeves Robert Pattinson