Colin Farrell Might Be Going From Mob Wars To Infantry As Sgt. Rock

The pursuit comes after Daniel Craig left the film from Luca Guadagnino for DC Studios

Of course it had to be St. Patrick’s Day to get casting news involving an Irish actor. Awards season is over. The Batman Part II still doesn’t have a finished script. That doesn’t matter to Colin Farrell, because it seems he’s willing to stay in the realm of DC Comics in the meantime. Coming off a highly acclaimed starring role as Oswald “Oz” Cobb in the The Batman spinoff HBO series The Penguin, which earned him a SAG Award, Golden Globe Award, Critics Choice Award, Saturn Award, and more, Farrell is being pursued for the title role in DC Studios’s developing Sgt. Rock film, which is intended for the new DC Universe.

The World War II action film originally had Daniel Craig attached, continuing his relationship with Queer director Luca Guadagnino and that film’s writer Justin Kuritzkes, a creative pair that also worked on last year’s Challengers. However, Craig never had a formal meeting with studio co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran before departing. Reportedly, he’s now circling Narnia. Because Craig’s detachment came the day before Safran and Gunn presented the state of the studio to the press, the subject came up, to which Gunn said the film would shoot this summer “only if we find the perfect actor.” If secured, filming would still be on track for such at the studio production hub in England.

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As for the Sgt. Rock character, Sgt. Franklin John Rock was created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert, debuting in Our Army at War #82 in 1959, and would quickly become known as a member of the Easy Company, a unit that fought in the European Theatre during World War II. That’s right, he fights Nazis. The character spawned his own comic series in 1977 which ran until July 1988. He can shoot down German plans with a single submachine gun, toss grenades with great accuracy, and utilize a “Combat Antenna” able to detect an incoming enemy siege. He is considered a great street fighter when not armed, and can survive gunshots. Adapted sparsely over the decades, the character has appeared in the DC Universe already on Creature Commandos, in flashbacks in the GI Robot focus episode "Cheers to the Tin Man", where he’s voiced by Homeland star Maury Sterling.

Despite Craig’s detachment after three months, Sgt. Rock still has the pole position for Guadagnino over his American Psycho remake with Lionsgate. Scheduling for the film, which Farrell does want to do, has to work in conjunction with his busy fall that includes the second season of Apple TV+’s Sugar, his Sony film A Big Bold Beautiful Journey alongside Margot Robbie which opens September 19 and is their first film performances since their Academy Award-nominated The Banshees of Inisherin and Barbie, and the still-unscheduled film The Ballad of a Small Player. Guadagnino also has his thriller After the Hunt for Amazon MGM opening October 10 and starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield.q

For some reason, despite The Penguin being a limited series, the trades are very eager to ask about a season two and this is what Farrell said about that “I don’t want it. I don’t not want it,” he told me exclusively backstage at the SAG Awards. “We all left it in the ring in those eight hours. I would hate to, just because of a quote-unquote success, have to go again and for it to be a diluted version of what people seem to feel it is, majoritively. So I’m in no rush. I have no deep desire to do it. … Sure, if they think of something that works in conjunction as a parallel to Matt Reeves’ cinematic universe and it’s a good idea, I’m open to it. But it’s not something concerning me.”

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Sources: Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety