Instead of carrying on the same storylines set up in Batman v. Superman, Matt Reeves opted to start fresh with his take on the Caped Crusader. In fact, as Reeves himself puts it, it’s one of the earliest takes we’ve seen on Batman yet. While it isn’t necessarily a straight adaptation of the beloved Year One comic, it is relatively early on in the vigilante’s career. Because of that, the filmmaker said Saturday at DC FanDome, he was initially worried Robert Pattinson would pass on playing the iconic role.
“I really did think, oh my God, this version of this character, this guy who sort of almost like, if you think of Bruce Wayne as like a reckless rock star in a decaying manner, there’s this part of me that self saw you as that, and I had no idea that you would be interested in playing the role at all,” the filmmaker said during the virtual event.
He added, “And I thought, ‘What if Rob doesn’t want to play Batman? This will be a disaster.’ (laughs) And then it turned out that you completely on your own had a whole path to the same thing, which is that you had been obsessed with Batman for years. And when you found out that we were doing this version, you were very interested.”
Reeves said when he found out Pattinson’s been gunning to play Bruce Wayne for the better part of his career, he felt a certain amount of fate was in play.
“So I was one of those things that for me felt really kind of lucky and fated. And then we met,” the filmmaker concluded. “I really felt that connection with you where I felt like, Oh, we’re going to be able to find something new with this guy and do something really special. But for me, you were always that version of what I saw in the page, and that was about trying to create a new version of Bruce.”
Reeves is directing the flick from a script he wrote with Mattson Tomlin and Peter Craig. Pattinson stars alongside Zoe Kravitz (Catwoman), Paul Dano (Riddler), Colin Farrell (Penguin), and Jeffrey Wright (Jim Gordon).
The Batman is currently set for release on March 4, 2022.