Christopher Nolan told ‘Batman Begins’ writer to turn down Affleck Batman job because it would’ve been “confusing”
David S. Goyer, the writer of Batman Begins, has said he was warned to not work on Ben Affleck’s version of the character by Christopher Nolan, who feared it would be “confusing”.
Goyer made his name as the writer of all three Blade movies, as well as the cult sci-fi Dark City. He would go on to write the script for Batman Begins, the first of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. He would also work on cracking the story for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises alongside the Oppenheimer director.
The writer would go on to work with Zack Snyder on Man Of Steel, the first in the now-defunct DC Extended Universe that was separate to The Dark Knight Trilogy. Speaking to the Happy. Sad. Confused. podcast, he recalls Nolan advising him not to get involved with any new interpretations of the character. “I remember Chris advising me not to work on the Affleck Batman, just because it’s confusing,” he said. “We did one and just stick with that.”
Goyer would ultimately ignore the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s advice, as he wrote the script for 2016’s Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, which introduced Affleck’s own version of The Caped Crusader. He was also an executive producer of the film.
Elsewhere in the interview, Goyer revealed Warner Bros were anxious about Batman Begins, specifically that Nolan didn’t show Christian Bale in the Batsuit until an hour in to the movie. “They were not happy about that,” he said, but added that: “We knew fairly early on that we needed to have the audience fall in love with Bruce Wayne. We had to have an amazing action sequence that involved Bruce Wayne and not Batman. That’s how we came up with that massive escape from the temple and him sliding down the ice”.
Ben Affleck would play Bruce Wayne/Batman from 2016 to 2023, when he had a brief appearance in The Flash. In March, the actor said he has “lost interest” in superhero movies, and said that playing Batman was “excruciating”.
The latest actor to play the Gotham hero is Robert Pattinson, who starred in 2022’s The Batman and will be part of its upcoming sequel. Despite an eventual five-year gap between the first movie and its follow-up, due in 2027, DC chief James Gunn recently said the movie is still “really important” to the studio.
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Victoria Luxford
NME
