Hoffman: I'm not playing Penguin

Toronto -- Hollywood actor Philip Seymour Hoffman says, contrary to rumors, he hasn't been asked to play the villainous Penguin in the next Batman movie.

British actor Michael Caine, who played Batman/Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred in "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight," recently told MTV News that the next Batman movie would feature Johnny Depp as the Riddler and Hoffman as The Penguin.

"I was with (a Warner Bros.) executive and I said, 'Are we going to make another one?'" Caine recalled. "They said, 'Yeah.' I said, 'How the hell are we going to top Heath (Ledger as The Joker')? And he says, 'I'll tell you how you top Heath -- Johnny Depp as the Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin.' I said, '(Expletive,) they've done it again!'"

However, MTV News caught up with Hoffman at the Toronto Film Festival and asked him if he had been hired to play the Penguin.

"No one has talked to me about it ever -- never," Hoffman said. "It happened, like, five years ago, too. It was a rumor back then and it's still a rumor. It's just in the press. It's funny."

Asked if he would be interested in the role if he was offered it, Hoffman said with a laugh: "I don't know. I think I'm more interested in seeing someone else do it. I don't know if I'd be a good Penguin to be quite honest."

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.