After appearing as Peter Parker’s bully blowhard newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson in Spider Man films, we will see JK Simmons this fall as confident crusading Commissioner Gordon in Justice League.  Although a small part this role teases bigger parts as Gordon could continue to appear in future films in the DC Extended Universe.

About his crossing the interdimensional divide from Marvel to DC, Simmons had this to say:  “My part in the first film coming out this fall is very, very small,” he told ScreenCrush in a recent interview.. “It’s a little introduction of the character. But whenever the next one gets off the ground, whether it’s The Batman movie or the Justice League sequel, and I know those things are getting shuffled around right now … we thought we might be getting to work pretty soon on The Batman, but we’ll see what the future brings. Hopefully that’ll be another comic-book character that I get to take two or three or four cracks at.”

Although remembered as a “jolly, ineffectual Santa Claus type” there’s definitely much more of a badass side to Commissioner Gordon.  Said Simmons,  “One of the things that’s interesting to me is investigating hopefully a little bit more of that badass [side]…You’re living in a universe where it’s pretty tough to be a badass compared to somebody like Batman, but in the universe of non-superheroes I like the idea of Commissioner Gordon as a guy that can take care of himself, a guy that’s a real partner to Batman, not just a guy that turns on the bat signal and goes, ‘Help! Help, Batman!’”

Screen Crush interviews Simmons