During his recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (as reported by Variety), Nicholas Hoult discussed his disappointment in losing the title role in Matt Reeves’ The Batman to Robert Pattinson.
“Yeah, of course it’s an emotional blow,” Hoult admitted. “Your imagination does not know … you are aware on a practical level: ‘I know I am auditioning against Rob.’ And Rob is fantastic in that movie. That was the right decision. But you get excited by the prospect. Matt [Reeves] is a fantastic director and the script … it’s a cool movie and I want to be a part of it. It’s a brilliant character. There’s a weird period before you can get to the acceptance and see the movie and be like that was the right choice, you go through the period of ‘what could I have done different? Why not me?’ You run through all those things.”
During the interview, Hoult suggested his audition was haunted by the specter of Pattinson’s Batman, revealing he learned The Lighthouse actor was the studio’s top choice while listening to his car radio. “I remember a week before we did the Batman test, I was driving in my car and I had the radio on and they were talking on the radio how Rob was going to be the new Batman,” he stated. “And I was like, ‘It’s not confirmed yet! I’m auditioning next weekend. Give me a chance.’”
While not getting to play Batman was a crushing disappointment, Hoult will enjoy the arguably juicier role of Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s Superman next year. As he admitted in the interview, “James Gunn is such a fantastic director and I was so excited by what he was building at DC. When we spoke…because they knew I had been through [the Batman] process, they didn’t want me to necessarily have to go through that again. That was very kind of them. There was an element of them being like, ‘We like you as an actor. We want you to be in this world.’”
By comic book logic, it’s fitting a person jealous of a superhero should become their self-appointed archenemy, so Hoult’s Luthor will already have some ballast to work with when he takes on David Corenswet’s Superman next year. It’s literally Lex’s entire motivation. From his humble beginnings, Luthor built Metropolis into the city of the future, but now there’s this corny alien flying around and everyone loves him instead? I was in Fury Road, goddamn it! Er…
Still, if Hoult decides he still needs to seek revenge against Batman in the future (did anyone else feel like The Menu could’ve been an episode of Gotham?), he’s not the worst choice to play Bruce Wayne’s envious childhood friend, Tommy “Hush” Elliot, is he? Or maybe even Bruce’s estranged brother from another dimension who dresses like an owl and kills people with boomerangs. Or what about one of the many anti-Batmen from over the years who never really stuck, like Killer Moth, Wrath, the Reaper, Prometheus, Azrael, Catman, Man-Bat, etc.? As there’s already been 85 years of ceaseless Batman content, there’s a good chance the opportunity for Hoult to play the character will come again. The key to revenge is merely patience.
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