Yesterday it was announced that The Lego Batman Movie had gained yet another great actor to voice one of its sure-to-be-fun roles. Ralph Fiennes has joined the Batmanimated spin-off of The Lego Movie! He will be voicing Batman’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth. In many ways, this seems like the perfect melding of two of Fiennes’ most recent roles: M in the current James Bond films and M. Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel.
While we’ve had a number of Alfreds in animated form via various TV shows and DTV animated movies over the past few years, theatrically things have been rather consistent. Alfred Gough held the role throughout all four entries of the original Batman film franchise and Michael Caine did the same in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Lately we’ve had the always-welcome Sean Pertwee as a somewhat sociopathic Alfred on Fox’s “Gotham” and, of course, we have Jeremy Irons’ take on the role to look forward to next year in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. It will be interesting to see what Fiennes brings to the table in his own iteration of the character.
Ralph Fiennes joins a cast currently comprised of the likes of Michael Cera as Robin, Rosario Dawson as Batgirl, and Zach Galifianakis as The Joker. Will Arnett reprises his role as Batman from The Lego Movie. The film was penned by Seth Grahame-Smith, is being produced by Phil Lord & Chris Miller, and directed by Chris McKay. It arrives in cinemas on February 10th, 2017.
