Could Nicholas Hoult have been perfect for The Batman? The Superman star speaks out on losing the iconic role to Robert Pattinson.
Robert Pattinson is set to go down in history as one of the greatest actors to ever play the Caped Crusader. However, The Batman was almost much different. Prior to landing the role of Lex Luthor in Superman, Nicholas Hoult almost played Gotham’s Dark Knight. When reflecting on his experience in a recent interview, Hoult admitted that losing the part was certainly a hard pill to swallow.
“Yeah, of course, it is an emotional blow because your imagination doesn’t know! [Laughs] You’re aware on a practical level,” Hoult told Josh Horowitz during a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “You’re like, ‘I know that I’m auditioning against Rob,’ and Rob’s fantastic in that movie. I think that was the right decision but also, you get excited about the prospect – Matt’s a fantastic director, and the script and everything I was like, ‘This is going to be a cool movie. I want to be part of it, and a brilliant character.'”
“So then there’s obviously a weird period before you can get to the acceptance and see the movie and be like, ‘Oh yeah that works, that was the right choice.’ You have to go through the period of like, ‘Oh what could I have done differently?’ You run through all those things, obviously.”
While it may sound silly for Nicholas Hoult to take losing the leading role in The Batman as hard as he did, it’s important to remember how much rejection the typical actor faces. Especially when someone is so close to the part of a lifetime, it’s certainly understandable it’d be a hit when Twilight heart-throb Robert Pattinson swoops in to land the role instead.
Nicholas Hoult Reveals The Hardest Thing About Losing His Role In The Batman
However, it seems Nicholas Hoult doesn’t view the rejection as the worst part about losing out on The Batman to Robert Pattinson. Apparently a compounding factor to the situation was how public the auditioning process was, reflecting on a particularly memorable moment where outlets were hyping up Pattinson before Hoult had even auditioned.
“Most people day today don’t care about this stuff, but it feels weird then because you’re like ‘Oh…’ and it’s one thing to have your failures, it’s one another thing to have them publicly broadcast, seemingly to everyone. It adds an element of drama to it, I suppose.”
“I remembered a week before we did The Batman test, I was driving in my car, and I had the radio on, and they were like and they were talking on the radio about how Rob was going to be the new Batman and I was like, ‘Well, it’s not confirmed yet.’ I was like, ‘I’m auditioning next weekend, give me a chance.'”
High-profile comic book projects like The Batman certainly present unique challenges not seen anywhere else in Hollywood. While it’s a shame that losing the role to Robert Pattinson caused quite a bit of turmoil inside Nicholas Hoult, the actor certainly seems to be on a rebound. He’s starred in a string of smaller hits. And now, after finally landing a comic book role as Lex Luthor in Superman, he may be getting a bigger role than he ever dreamed of.
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