After months and months of speculation regarding Christian Bales future as The Caped Crusader; the actor himself has confirmed (and to be fair not for the first time) that his outing as Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises was his final appearance as Batman. All that pre-Man Of Steel release hope that a huge box office opening would force Warner Bros' hands into making an offer he couldn't refuse to the Welsh born actor, has proven not to be the case. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Bale mentioned that he has no intention whatsoever in reprising his role in any future projects, ruling himself out of appearing in a future Justice League movie. He said;
We were incredible fortunate to get to make three Batman films, thats enough. Lets not get greedy. Chris always said he wanted to make it one film at a time. And we ended up sitting there looking at each other, saying, Were about to make the third. We never really knew if we were going to be there, but if that was how it was going to be, this was where it should end as well. Its a torch that should be handed from one actor to another. So I enjoy looking forward to what somebody else will come up with.
There is no doubt that Bale has made the Batman role his own and it will be peculiar seeing another actor aiming to live up to the benchmark that Bale and Nolan have both set. David S. Goyer of course had suggested in recent interviews that it was his feeling that Joseph Gordon-Levitt would take on the mantle of Batman for the Justice League series of films and that does seem a logical move at this point. Why go through the hassle of re-casting Bruce Wayne when Christopher Nolan made it easy for Warner Bros to carry on with JGL's Donald Blake as a new Caped Crusader? Although not yet confirmed, persistent rumours suggest a Justice League movie will hit theatres in 2015. For that to happen, WB are sure going to have to ramp up pre-production. Who would you want to see take over as Batman?