Robert Pattinson‘s new iteration of The Dark Knight may have just found one of his most important allies.

A new report says that Jeffrey Wright (Casino Royale, Westworld) is in talks to play Commissioner Gordon in The Batman for director Matt Reeves.

The Hollywood Reporter says Wright is in negotiations to be the latest actor to play a live-action version of Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim Gordon, a morally upstanding guy who always seems to be barely treading water in the fight against crime, necessitating a loose partnership with a guy who wanders the city dressed like a bat.

Gordon and Batman have a strong alliance going all the way back to 1939, when they debuted together in the pages of Detective Comics #27. Since then, Commissioner Gordon has been memorably played by several actors: Pat Hingle played him in the Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher movies of the ’80s and ’90s, and Gary Oldman took over for a less goofy version of the character in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Most recently J.K. Simmons portrayed him in Justice League. (Can I be honest and say that I totally forgot that Commissioner Gordon was in Justice League? Even those photos of Simmons getting jacked couldn’t make that movie memorable.) There was even an entire TV series about the character, since a younger version of Jim Gordon was the lead character of the FOX series Gotham.

Wright, who has credits on projects as varied as Syriana, Lady in the Water, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, and Marvel’s upcoming What If? TV series, has proven exceptionally good at being an exposition machine in projects like Source Code and Westworld. While a few movie iterations of Commissioner Gordon have seen him get his hands dirty, the character often just meets Batman on a roof and explains situations to him without doing much else. But Wright has also proven that he can be a capable sidekick by playing CIA agent Felix Leiter in the James Bond franchise opposite Daniel Craig, so hopefully this version of Gordon has more to do than just stand around and look good in an overcoat as it blows in the Gotham breeze.

Wright will soon be seen again on screen in Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat and Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, as well as the next James Bond film, No Time to Die.

The Batman hits theaters on June 25, 2021.

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