"I didn’t quite nail it” were the words recently uttered by a far too modest Christian Bale about his performance in Christopher Nolan‘s "The Dark Knight" trilogy. No matter how he might feel, the actor did a terrific job in the cowl, and for me, he’s been the best so far. And while Zack Snyder is mounting something totally different both in tone and spirit with "Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice," the director reveals that had things gone very differently, Bale might’ve had another shot in the DC Films universe.
Chatting with FilmInk (via Collider), Snyder reveals he thought about casting Bale in ‘Dawn Of Justice,’ but not as Batman — in a different role completely. And even more, he suggests Warner Bros. asked him who he might get from Nolan’s pictures to reprise their roles.
READ MORE: Is ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice’ In Trouble?
"This is a total and opposite reality from the Chris Nolan movies," Snyder said about the tone of his movie. "It’s 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. 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.’ 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."
Thankfully, Snyder realized that even mildly cross-pollinating would be disorienting to say the least; his approach and Nolan’s are polar opposite. But it perhaps does speak just how valuable WB perceives those "The Dark Knight" movies to be that they thought about some kind of connection to the upcoming movie.
"Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice" opens on March 25th. Check out some new TV spots below.