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‘Dawn Of Justice’ Creators Wanted Christian Bale In The Movie But Not As Batman

By Nicholas Kitonyi
Published on: 04:24 PST, Mar 10, 2016

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice creators wanted Christian Bale to play a part in the upcoming DC Comics movie. Zack Snyder, the director of the film, told Film Ink during an in-depth look into Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that they considered hiring The Dark Knight actor for a role in the movie, but probably not as Bruce Wayne/Batman.

“Maybe we could hire him to play another part. We did talk about that briefly. I just wanted to hire Christian to play another part to make that obvious. Christian could play, like, Alfred with age makeup. No! Of course not. But you know what I mean.”

Christian Bale played the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in The Dark Knight trilogy, but after his contract ended after the third installment of the film series, he announced his retirement from the character. He had said that the only way back for him to play the character, Batman, would be if Christopher Nolan asked him to. “The thing is that this will be, I believe, unless Chris says different, this will be the last time I’m playing Batman,” Bale told E! News in 2010.

However, in the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice film, Zack Snyder is the director, while Christopher Nolan is an executive producer. Ben Affleck, who played Matt Murdock/Daredevil in the 2003 Marvel Comics film, Daredevil, plays the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman in Dawn of Justice.

During the in-depth discussion over the film, Snyder also said that Nolan had created a universe that could not accommodate Superman/Clark Kent played by Henry Cavill, Man of Steel, and thus in order to bring the two characters together, things had to be tweaked significantly.

“This is a total and opposite reality from the Chris Nolan movies. It’s another universe, so we couldn’t hire Christian Bale if we wanted to, because he doesn’t exist in our world.

“In the Batman universe that Chris Nolan created, Superman would have a hard time existing. That that’s why we did a reboot on the universe, so we could allow these characters to exist together. We needed to do that to have Batman exist in this world.”

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice will be followed by The Justice League Part 1 in 2017 and Part Two in 2019, thereby completing the new Batman movie trilogy. This also makes sense as to why the Batman character had to be played by a different actor, as it shows a major step from The Dark Knight trilogy created by Nolan.

Christian Bale brought more than $2 billion in box office to the producers of The Dark Knight trilogy, and he will certainly be missed in the next three Batman movies. However, Snyder believes that in Ben Affleck, he has another great actor to fill the role left by Bale. When he was asked why he chose Ben Affleck to play Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder was full of praise, citing Affleck’s experience and height as some of the main attributes.

“I really wanted an old Batman – not, like, decrepit! I wanted a world weary Batman … someone who has had experiences, and Ben has really hit that. He’s a movie star now in the greatest definition of the word. He has gravitas. We’ve greyed his hair a little, and we’ve made him look a bit rough and rugged, in a good way. He’s a great actor, and he’s a big person. He’s 6’4?, and in the boots, he’s 6’6?. I don’t like a small Batman … I like my Batmen bigger!”

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice premieres in theaters on March 25, 2016, and box office analysts are already predicting huge revenue grossing for the movie in the opening weekend, North America, and the rest of the world. Forbes Showbiz predicts a total box office gross of nearly $1.8 billion.

This creates an interesting scenario for the statisticians as many will be waiting to analyze the numbers from the first film in the new Batman trilogy in comparison to the first one in The Dark Knight trilogy.

Nonetheless, there is no way Christian Bale would have played a part in the Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie other than the role of the Batman.

[Photo via Warner Bros]

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zack snyder Ben Affleck Henry Cavill Batman v Superman
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