Batman v Superman director wanted to cast Christian Bale

Yep, you heard that right: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice director, Zack Snyder, wanted to cast Christian Bale in his movie… but not as Batman. (Sorry we left that part out.)

Speaking with Filmink, Snyder talked about how he wanted to have Bale appear in his movie at one point. ‘This is a total and opposite reality from the Chris Nolan movies,’ he first explains. ‘Its another universe, so we couldn’t hire Christian Bale if we wanted to, because he doesn’t exist in our world. Maybe we could hire him to play another part. We did talk about that briefly.’

Snyder goes on to elaborate his thought process on the off-kilter idea of getting Bale into his new Batman movie (a film released only four years after Bale’s final outing as the caped crusader, The Dark Knight Rises). ‘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. Even people at the studio would say, ‘Who are you getting from the other movies?’ And I was like, “Hey, come on guys, let’s all understand, it’s a different world”.’

The director’s main problem with having Bale’s and Nolan’s vision of Batman go up against his personal take on Superman, is one of fantasy versus practicality: ‘In the Batman universe that Chris Nolan created, Superman would have a hard time existing. 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.’

Of course, the Dark Knight trilogy was a realistic take on a superhero: and the Man of Steel simply would defy those rules if he were to randomly be thrown aside Bale as Batman. Still, we’ve heard very good things about Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne, so we may have another iconic portrayal already (even if Bale himself admitted that he ‘didn’t quite nail it‘ during his run as Batman).

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is released March 25.