Josh Hartnett as Batman? Christopher Nolan Says ‘Initial’ Talks Were Had, but the Actor Was ‘More Interested’ in ‘The Prestige’ Anyway
Josh Hartnett revealed to Playboy magazine in 2015 that he talked with Christopher Nolan about taking on the role of the Caped Crusader in the director’s “Batman Begins,” which launched Warner Bros.’ billion-dollar grossing “Dark Knight” trilogy. How far did those talks go before Nolan settled on Christian Bale instead? In a new interview on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Nolan confirmed talks with Hartnett took place, but his casting never got too serious.
“No, it never got that far,” Nolan said when asked if he screen-tested Hartnett for the role of Batman.
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“I met with Josh and if I recall, he was a young actor whose work I was very interested in,” Nolan added. “I had an initial conversation with him but he had read my brother’s script for ‘The Prestige’ at the time and was more interested in getting involved with that. So it never went further than that.”
Hartnett was not cast in “Batman Begins,” nor was he cast in “The Prestige.” Both films starred Bale. Hartnett would have to wait over a decade to get his chance to work with Nolan, which he did in the upcoming “Oppenheimer.” Hartnett plays Ernest Lawrence, a nuclear physicist and the inventor of the cyclotron who becomes J. Robert Oppenheimer’s close friend at the University of California, Berkley.
Hartnett isn’t the only “Oppenheimer” actor with ties to Nolan’s Batman. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Nolan confirmed his “Oppenheimer” lead Cillian Murphy screen tested for the role of Batman. Both men knew Murphy was not right for the part, but Nolan wanted Murphy to screen test in front of studio executives so they could see his acting chops.
“Everybody was so excited by watching you perform that when I then said to them, ‘Okay, Christian Bale is Batman, but what about Cillian to play Scarecrow?’ There was no dissent,” Nolan remembered. “All the previous Batman villains had been played by huge movie stars: Jack Nicholson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Carrey, that kind of thing. That was a big leap for them and it really was purely on the basis of that test. So that’s how you got to play Scarecrow.”
“Oppenheimer” opens in theaters July 21 from Universal Pictures. Watch Nolan’s latest appearance on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast below.
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